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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - Ukrainian police have foiled a plot to desecrate a relic of St. Andrew’s cross while it was being venerated in Kiev, the nation’s capital, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
The relic, normally enshrined at the Greek Orthodox Basilica of St. Andrew in Patras, Greece, was being venerated in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus to mark the 1,025th anniversary of the baptism of Kievan Rus’.
According to a member of the Ukrainian parliament, members of FEMEN, a Ukrainian feminist group that engages in lewd anti-religious protests, disguised as nuns but were apprehended before they could carry out their plan to urinate and defecate on the relic.
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CWN - The Maronite Catholic bishops have urged Lebanon to maintain neutrality in the face of current conflicts in their region, the Fides news service reports.
The statement from the Maronite bishops obviously refers most pointedly to the conflict in neighboring Syria. The bishops added that caring for the thousands of refugees from that civil war who have found their way to Lebanon is a “national duty.”
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Ain Traz Meeting hosted by Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregorios III
1-2 August 2013
Ain Traz - 3 August 2013
Representatives of Aid to the Church in Need, Caritas, Cor Unum, the Good Shepherd Sisters and other charitable institutions hosted by Melkite Patriarch Gregorios III at his Ain Traz summer residence, met with him and other Church representatives over the first two days of August to study common approaches to humanitarian aid in crisis-torn Syria.
Organised by ACN's Fr Andrzej Halemba, the meeting allowed HB Gregorios III together with Abp Mario Zenari, Papal Nuncio to Syria, Mgr Paolo Borgia of the Lebanese Nunciature, Abp Samir Nassar of the Maronite Church in Damascus, Mgr Giampetro dal Toso of Cor Unum, representatives of the Syrian Catholic bishop of Homs and representatives of Caritas Syria, Caritas Lebanon, Caritas MONA, CNEWA, Fundazione AVSI, CRS Lebanon, Good Shepherd Sisters and ECHO to deliberate co-ordinated courses of action and study appropriate methodologies for relief work.
Spiritual support and loving solidarity, together with prayer underpin financial and practical assistance.
Many families in Syria are suffering from the crisis and children's education is frequently jeopardised. Though a coordinated response to these problems is often difficult due to lack of personnel and resources, Caritas MONA can serve to coordinate responses from different branches of Caritas.
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Prot. 346/2013R
Rabweh 8 August 2013
Dear Muslim Fellow-Citizens!
I send you cordial good wishes for Eid ul Fitr. We rejoice with you as we reflect on this festival's sublime, spiritual values, especially that of surrender to God's will.
We are suffering with you and with all our Muslim brothers and sisters, especially those of the Arab world, in the face of those tragic situations that have made all our hearts bleed, since any Arab blood shed is blood of sons and daughters of the same family.
We are praying for peace and security and especially for unity of the Arab and Muslim world.
We believe that this unity is the foundation for peace and prosperity in the Arab and Muslim world, and the purity of authentic Islam, alongside which we have lived for 1434 [Islamic] years. Together we have built a common Arab Muslim-Christian humane, open society.
Dear brethren,
We believe that division of the Muslim Arab world is the real danger for Muslim and Christian Arabs and for Islam and Christianity. That is the real danger for our living together, civilisation, tradition, future, mission and role in our Arab East and throughout the world.
We congratulate you with all our heart. We pray for the fulfilment of a shared Muslim-Christian Arab vision, for a better future for our rising generations, and to meet the aspirations, shouts and slogans of the real Arab revolution that spring from a desire to seek to ensure a worthy, better life for the sons and daughters of this East that is so dear to us all.
Our best wishes for a happy feast, our affection and sincere good wishes for peace to return to the land of peace!
+ Gregorios III
Patriarch of Antioch and All the East
Of Alexandria and of Jerusalem
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CWN - Western analysts “have overestimated the real roots of political Islam in the Egyptian people,” an Egyptian prelate has told the Fides news service.
Bishop Kamal Fahim Awad Hanna of Minya cited the US ambassador to Egypt in particular as someone who had reported that the Muslim Brotherhood was the only political force with broad public support. That report is inaccurate, the Coptic Catholic bishop said. He argued that the Muslim Brotherhood won election “only because the people would not vote the leaders of the old regime.”
While Western observers overemphasize the public appeal of Islam, Bishop Hanna said, Muslim leaders have been “resorting to the theory of Christian conspiracy” to explain the fall of the government led by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian bishop saw this conspiracy theory as particularly sinister because it is being exploited to incite violence against the Christian minority. By claiming that Christians engineered their ouster from power, Islamic leaders “justify the terrorist attacks being prepared against them,” he said.
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risu.org.ua - In an interview with UNIAN, Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) spoke about why priests should not be involved in politics, the importance of freedom of the church from the government, and the need to change the stereotypical notion of power.
“We have publicly stated that involvement in politics is not for priests. If a priest feels that he wants to be a deputy, then it means that he does not understand his mission. Furthermore, why does the state now focus so much attention on the church? I think it is an attempt, to a certain extent, to find a state church. For today in Ukraine there is a power crisis, we see it,” said Patriarch Shevchuk.
According to the hierarch, if we compare the level of trust that exists in the government and the level of trust that exists in the church, we see that they differ greatly. Therefore, as stresses Patriarch Shevchuk, the government is seeking a state church purely for self-interest.
“The church should not give in, it must preserve its freedom, otherwise it will become as discredited as the government structures are today,” warns the head of the UGCC.
Patriarch Shevchuk added: “The church must give meaning, new meaning to the service of the government. And only then can the state structures experience a renaissance. Not when they take over a church, no. But when they listen to it. When someone who comes to power will understand that his goal is not to preserve his capital or to have protection for his business. It needs to be that when a person goes into politics, he wants to serve someone, sacrifice something for his neighbor. Today the stereotype and notion of power is absolutely Soviet. It seems power is sought in order to rule with all its consequences, to the point that it becomes a repressive mechanism. And so I think it should be changed, transformed in the light of the example of Prince Volodymyr.”