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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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CWN - The head of the Coptic Orthodox Church has suspended the weekly audiences that he ordinarily holds in Cairo, due to security concerns.
Coptic Pope Tawadros II cancelled his Wednesday audience on July 18; it was the 3rd consecutive week that he has chosen not to hold the meetings, at which he usually delivers a short catechetical address and leads the faithful in prayer—much as in a papal audience in Rome. A spokesman for the Coptic Church said that the Egyptian prelate has avoided the public gatherings “not so much because he fears for his life, but because he does not want people to gather for fear that some fool could throw a few bombs.”
Egyptian government officials have stepped up security protection for Pope Tawadros. But Coptic Christians have been the targets of several violent attacks in recent days.
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CWN - Four Coptic Christians were murdered and 23 homes were looted and burned down in a recent Islamist attack on Christians in Dabaaya, a village in southern Egypt.
Police looked on as the incidents took place, according to witnesses.
“The screams of the women inside” the Coptic church “echo[ed] throughout the place,” according to a reporter for MidEast Christian News. “We entered to see the victims wearing black clothes and lying on the ground, some crying and others screaming, and some simply not moving, tired of the pain and suffering.”
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CWN - St. Lazarus Monastery in Bethany (al-Eizariya), founded a century ago by the Cypriot Orthodox community, has come under attack after a local Muslim family asserted land ownership.
Actions taken against the community of nuns have included “throwing stones, broken glass, theft, and looting of the monastery property,” the Fides news agency reported.
“We do not exclude that behind these attacks there are those who want to foment discord among the children of the Palestinian nation,” the monastery’s mother superior said in a letter to Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “Someone wants to send us away, but we will not flee.” This text was written and published thanks to the support of the Youtube to mp4 service.
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CWN - The head of the Russian Orthodox Church led a religious service in St. Petersburg on July 12 to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the rule of the House of Romanov, which governed Russia from 1613 to 1917.
“Today we are celebrating the 400 years of the House of Romanov,” said Patriarch Kirill I of Moscow. “It is with gratitude that we recall what they did for the benefit of the people. We know how Russia turned into a great state, a world power, how its economy, industry and culture developed.”
“Today we prayed for the prosperity of Rus,” he added. “We prayed for the growth of material well-being, which is so much needed today, to be accompanied by the growth of spiritual well-being. It is the beginning that is able to ensure the nation’s step-by-step development without any frightening rifts, fractures, and catastrophes.”
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CWN - The Patriarch of the Maronite Catholic Church is warning that the rise of sectarian militias allied to other nations will destroy Lebanon.
“The Lebanese built their country on the basis of living together, preserving Lebanon against any loyalty to other nations of the East or the West,” said Cardinal Béchara Boutros Raï in reference to Lebanon’s 1943 National Pact, which assigned difference political offices to Christians and Muslims. Sectarian militias, he said, are leading to the “law of the jungle and an increase in crime.”
Bishop François Eid explained that the Patriarch was referring to “the Shiite militia of Hezbollah, [which] fell to the side of the Syrian regime, while the Salafis’ militia [has] gone to Syria to fight alongside the rebels. Our country is already immersed in that terrible conflict. And this, for Lebanon, can be devastating.”
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risu.org.ua - Cardinal Kurt Koch, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, noted that in recent times the number of accusations of proselytism against Greek Catholics in western Ukraine from the Orthodox has significantly decreased.
He stated this on June 10 in Lviv during a visit to the Ukrainian Catholic University in response to a question by a RISU correspondent on whether the Vatican can stop Moscow from accusing the Greek Catholics of proselytism, as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) believes that it is currently on good terms with the Greek Catholics.
“These allegations by the Orthodox today are not heard as often as they were in the past,” said the cardinal.
Cardinal Kurt Koch said that the question of proselytism is very complex, because some accusations of proselytism are groundless.
“This issue is the problem of freedom of choice of the individual. Everyone has the right to choose the confession and church, which he wants to belong to. Therefore, these questions regarding the freedom of choice should be left to each individual,” he said
The head of the UGCC, Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk, who accompanied the distinguished guest at the Ukrainian Catholic University, expressed his wish for the allegations by the Russian Orthodox Church against the Greek Catholics to become a thing of the past.
“For 20 years we have been hearing the accusations, but the problems are only when there is a reluctance to have unity. The words of Metropolitan Anthony are extremely important and we hope that finally all the accusations against the Greek Catholics, which we hear from representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, become a thing of the past. We hope that this information, which is coming from a representative of the UOC-MP, will be heard in Moscow, by the Russian Orthodox Church. As for us, the Greek Catholics, we will always speak the truth, no matter how bitter it may be,” said the patriarch.
The issue of “proselytism by the UGCC” and the conflict between Greek Catholics and the Orthodox of the Moscow Patriarchate in Western Ukraine has always been raised by the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church before the Vatican when there is discussion about establishing the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue and the opportunity for the Patriarch of Moscow to meet with the pope. The favorite topic of the Russian Orthodox Church clergy is the “forced liquidation” of three Orthodox eparchies in Galicia in the early 1990s.
Meanwhile, on May 27, during the seventh Festival of Orthodox Media in Lviv, the administrator of the UOC-MP Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanych) of Boryspil said that in Galicia there is no tension between the Orthodox and the Greek Catholics and the relationship between the two churches in this region is stable.