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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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Melkite Greek Catholic P A T R I A R C H A T E of Antioch and All the East of Alexandria and of Jerusalem |
Speech of His Beatitude Patriarch Gregorios III
during the 55th. ICMC Council Meeting
Rome, 17-20 November 2010
The Synod for the Middle East
Inspirational Conclusions on Migration
Dear Friends!
The Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East was, in my opinion, the greatest event after the Second Vatican Council's fine words about the Eastern Churches.
During this Synod the whole floor was given to the Eastern Catholic Churches. The Eastern Catholic Patriarchs, and the Bishops who were members of their patriarchal Synods, were there in force. They all spoke, making contributions on various topics before the Synod. They expressed their views through the media who were very keen to ask them about the Christian East, so little known, so complex in its component parts, so rich in rites and traditions and so important for the future of the Middle East, for Christians, Jews and Muslims living together, and for Peace, which is the great good for all the inhabitants of this Holy Land, of Arab countries, where sixty per cent are young people who are best placed to become victims of growing fundamentalism, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This Synod for the Middle East, carefully considered the problem of Migrants, the object and subject of our congress.
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CWNews.com - Cardinal Francis George, speaking at the fall meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told those assembled that the two priests slain in the Syrian Catholic cathedral on October 31 were killed while offering Mass and hearing confessions.
“Our brothers in the priesthood, Father Thaer Saad and Father Boutros Wassim, were slain as one celebrated Mass and the other heard confessions,” Cardinal George said. “Father Thaer prayed and asked a terrorist to spare the lives of his parishioners before he died. Father Raphael [a third priest] moved parishioners to a safer location in the Church and was grievously wounded.”
The US bishops affirmed by acclamation the content of Cardinal George’s recent letter calling upon President Barack Obama to come to the aid of Iraqi Christians.
In his final address as USCCB president, Cardinal George also said:
We are not a national Church; we resist being transformed into a purely American denomination. I therefore cannot depart this position or leave you today without speaking of our Catholic brothers and sisters in Iraq. Ever since the capture of Baghdad, it has been clear to anyone of good will that, while Muslim groups might be in conflict with one another, it was uniquely the Christians who were without protection in the wake of the American invasion of Iraq. Now, at the end of last month, on the vigil of the feast of All Saints, in the Syriac Catholic Cathedral of our Lady of Deliverance in the city of Baghdad, many dozens of Catholics were killed as they gathered for Mass. Two were priests: one was killed at the altar and the other as he left the confessional. They are joined in death with hundreds of others who have died for their faith in Christ since the current conflict began. An American Dominican Sister, a friend of a friend, has written from that country: “Waves of grief have enveloped their world, surging along the fault lines created in Iraqi society by the displacement of thousands of Iraq’s Christian minority who have fled what is clearly a growing genocidal threat…One survivor was asked by a reporter, what do you say to the terrorists? Through his tears he said, ‘We forgive you.’…Among the victims of this senseless tragedy was a little boy named Adam. Three-year-old Adam witnessed the horror of dozens of deaths, including that of his own parents. He wandered among the corpses and the blood, following the terrorists around and admonishing them, ‘enough, enough, enough.’ According to witnesses, this continued for two hours until Adam was himself murdered.” As bishops, as Americans, we cannot turn from this scene or allow the world to overlook it.
Dear brothers, we have all experienced challenges and even tragedies that tempt us to say at times, “enough.” Yet all of our efforts, our work, our failures and our sense of responsibility pale before the martyrdom of our brothers and sisters in Iraq and the active persecution of Catholics in other parts of the Middle East, in India and Pakistan, in China and in Vietnam, in Sudan and African countries rent by civil conflict. With their faces always before us, we stand before the Lord, collectively responsible for all those whom Jesus Christ died to save; and that is more than enough to define us as bishops and to keep us together in mission.
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CWNews.com - The research of Ukrainian historians has led to renewed interest in the Servant of God Metropolitan Archbishop Andrey Sheptytsky (1865-1944), who led the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church for over four decades and saved the lives of Jews during World War II.
Venerable John Paul II told Ukrainian bishops in 2001:
I wish to recall with gratitude other Pastors too who also paid dearly for their faithfulness to Christ and for their decision to remain in union with the Successor of Peter. How can we fail to recall, among them, the Servant of God Metropolitan Andrii Sheptytsky? My revered predecessor, Pope Pius XII, declared that his noble life was cut short "not so much by his advanced age, but by the sufferings of his soul as Pastor, struck down with his flock."Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
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The Catholic Anchor is the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Anchorage.
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CWNews.com - A Pakistani Christian mother has been sentenced to death for blaspheming the prophet Mohammed after she refused to convert to Islam.
Asia Bibi, a resident of Ittanwali in the eastern province of Punjab, was working at a local farm when the Muslim women with whom she was working called her an infidel and urged her to convert to Islam. Bibi refused, saying that Christianity was the only true religion.
“The Muslim men working in nearby fields also gathered and attacked Asia Bibi on which she fled to village in her home,” the Pakistan Christian Post reported. “The angry Muslims followed her and took her out of home and started beating her. They tortured her children also, but meanwhile someone informed police.”
Police then arrested Bibi on blasphemy charges. Following a lengthy trial, she has been sentenced to death.
In the past two months, five other Pakistani Christians have been falsely accused of blasphemy, according to Peter Jacob, executive secretary of the Pakistani bishops’ national commission for justice and peace.
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CWNews.com - The government of Belarus has prohibited the showing of Forbidden Christ, a film documenting the persecution of Protestants during the Stalin era, at a Catholic film festival.
Belarus, whose government maintains close ties with Russia and has never repudiated the old Communist regime, still exercises strict controls on religious activity, especially for smaller Protestant sects. The government has announced that church organizations have no right to challenge rulings that bar distribution of religious literature the state deems inappropriate.
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