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Last Updated: 11 August 2015

CWN - Forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant seized al-Qaryatayn, a central Syrian town of 15,000, and kidnapped over 230 of the town’s residents.

Among those abducted were numerous Christians-- dozens according to Reuters, 150 according to the International Business Times.

Reacting to the kidnappings, Chaldean Catholic Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo said that the Islamic State’s goal was to “push [Christians] to emigrate.”

“If the war continues, as seems likely,” he told Vatican Radio, “all the Christians will leave Syria.”

The Islamic State, which now controls 20% of Iraq and over half of Syria, also advanced toward Sadad, a town of 3,500 that is 20 miles from al-Qaryatayn, leading hundreds of Christians to flee.

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Last Updated: 11 August 2015

CWN - Pope Francis has approved a decree on the martyrdom of Bishop Flavianus Michael Malke (1858-1915), thus paving the way for his beatification.

Bishop Malke, the Syriac Catholic bishop of Gazireh (now Cizre, Turkey), was slain during the Assyrian genocide after he refused to convert to Islam. He will be beatified in Lebanon on August 29, the 100th anniversary of his martyrdom.

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Last Updated: 11 August 2015

CWN - The Council of Maronite Bishops warned that Lebanon may soon collapse unless the nation’s parliament elects a new president.

Since 1943, Lebanon has typically had a Maronite Christian president and a Sunni Muslim prime minister. President Michel Suleiman’s term ended in May 2014, but the parliament’s political factions have not agreed on who the next president should be.

The bishops called upon “politicians to adhere to the constitution and head to parliament to elect a new head of state,” the Lebanese news site Naharnet reported. “Political responsibility requires them to refrain from making excuses.”

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Last Updated: 11 August 2015

CWN - In recent interviews with Aid to the Church in Need, the head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church criticized Western policies toward Syria and vowed to remain with his flock in the war-torn nation.

“If [the West] helps moderates in Syria in a direct way, [it is] helping ISIS in an indirect way,” said Patriarch Gregory III Laham, 81. “If you give money to the weak, moderate groups one day, it will get into the hands of the powerful, militant groups the next. We see this happening every day.”

450,000 Syrian Christians have fled their homes, he said, and 50,000 now live in Sweden, while 40,000 live in Germany.

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Last Updated: 09 August 2015

(Vatican Radio)  Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, on Saturday elevated the Church of Saint Anne in Los Angeles to the level of Co-cathedral of the Catholic Eparchy of Newton of the Greek Melkites.

Bishop Nicholas Samra, the Eparch of Newton, was present at the celebration, as well as the Archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez.

In his message during the Liturgy, Cardinal Sandri recalled the suffering and persecution of Christians in the Middle East, likening it to California’s Northridge Earthquake of 1994, which damaged the Church of St. Anne in Los Angeles.

He said “It seems that for too many years your motherland, the Middle East, has been shaken to its foundations by an earthquake which seems, not only never to end, but actually to increase its intensity from day to day. It carries with it sorrow and suffering, especially for the littlest and poorest, among whom are many of our brothers and sisters in the faith.”

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Last Updated: 07 August 2015

CWN - One year after 120,000 Christians of the Nineveh plain fled from the advance of the Islamic State, an Iraqi prelate spoke of the daily challenges faced by refugees in Erbil, a city of 1.5 million that is capital of the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

“Today we can say that Iraqi Kurdistan is safe and its government is of great help to us,” said Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil. “Now we wait for the liberation of our lands but, more importantly, we expect them to be made safe before we can start reconstruction.”

“As a bishop I must take care of the daily needs of my people and show them that Christ’s love transcends the evil committed by the Islamic State,” who said that refugees are no longer living in tents and that 11 schools have been constructed for them.

Archbishop Warda, who is founding a Catholic university in Erbil, told AsiaNews that “our ancestors chose education as a means of promoting culture in the land of Mesopotamia, which was theirs when it was invaded from the Arab desert at the time of Islam’s expansion. The situation is very similar today, with Christians facing the onslaught of the Islamic State.”