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Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
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It's Been a Difficult Year for Christians
ROME, DEC. 20, 2009 (Zenit.org).- It’s been another difficult year for Christians in Turkey and it is finishing just as it began, with problems. Early in December, three Muslims entered the Meryem Ana Church, a Syriac Orthodox church in Diyarbakir, and confronted the Reverend Yusuf Akbulut, according to a Dec. 15 report by Compass Direct News, an agency specializing in reporting on religious persecution.
They told the priest that that unless the bell tower was destroyed in one week, they would kill him. The Muslims were apparently acting in reaction to the recent referendum in Switzerland, which banned the construction of new minarets for mosques.
According to the report Meryem Ana is more than 250 years old and is one of a handful of churches that serve the Syriac community in Turkey.
The Syriacs are an ethnic and religious minority in Turkey and were one of the first groups of people to accept Christianity, said the article by Compass News Direct.
The year had started badly, with a land dispute involving one of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries, reported Reuters, Jan. 21. The fifth-century Syriac monastery Mor Gabriel is located in Midyat, a village near the border with Syria.
"This is our land. We have been here for more than 1,600 years," said Kuryakos Ergun, head of the Mor Gabriel Foundation, according to the report.
Problems began when Turkish government officials redrew the boundaries around Mor Gabriel and the surrounding villages in 2008 as part of work to update a land registry.
According to the monks, the new boundaries take away from them large plots of land the monastery has owned for centuries. It also designates part of the monastery's land as public forest.
Fleeing
According to Reuters, there were 250,000 Syriacs when Ataturk founded Turkey after World War I. Today they number only 20,000, with many having left the country to escape persecution.
The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy article on the dispute over the monastery property on March 7. The article pointed out that the dispute comes at a critical moment in Turkey’s long-standing attempt to be accepted as a member of the European Union.
The monastery’s Bishop Timotheus Samuel Aktas presides over a dwindling community, made up of only 3 monks and 14 nuns. Locally, there are around 3,000 Syriacs.
The monastery, founded in 397, has a great symbolic importance, the article explained and is considered by Syriacs to be a sort of "second Jerusalem."
The battles are still continuing in the courts and, in another link with events in Switzerland, the Federal Council of Switzerland recently adopted a motion in support of the monastery in Turkey.
According to a Dec. 8 report by the Assyrian International News Agency the motion states:
"The Federal Council is to be asked to intervene with the Turkish government to ensure that the ownership of the Syriac Monasteries in southeast of Turkey continue to be guaranteed, and that the minority rights of Assyrians is respected according to the Copenhagen criteria."
The Copenhagen criteria refer to a series of principles that a country seeking to join the European Union, as Turkey is currently doing, must respect. One of them involves respect for human rights and the protection of minorities.
Accusations
Other instances of intolerance punctuated the life of Christians in Turkey during the past 12 months. On Oct. 16 Compass Direct News reported on the trial of two Christians, accused of having insulted Islam.
Defense Attorney Haydar Polat said the trial was a scandal, pointing to the fact that in proceedings three of the witnesses for the prosecution admitted they did not even know the two Christians on trial.
Hakan Tastan and Turan Topal were arrested in October 2006 following charges that they had slandered Turkishness and Islam while talking about their faith with three young men in Silivri, a town about an hour’s drive west of Istanbul. They could be jailed for up to 2 years if found guilty of the charges.
The matter is still not over, with proceedings adjourned until Jan. 28, 2010, due to the court having repeated its summons to three more prosecution witnesses who failed to appear at the hearing.
Then, on Dec. 4 Compass Direct News published a report on a survey that showed more than half of the population of Turkey opposes members of other religions holding meetings or publishing materials to explain their faith.
The survey also found that almost 40% of the population of Turkey said they had "very negative" or "negative" views of Christians.
The survey, carried out in 2008, was part of a study commissioned by the International Social Survey Program, a 45-nation academic group that conducts polls and research about social and political issues.
Overview
Forum 18, a Norwegian-based human rights group, published on Nov. 27 a survey of religious freedom in Turkey. The group takes its name from Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declares that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
Overall, the study concluded: “that the country continues to see serious violations of international human rights standards on freedom of religion or belief.”
Turkey has not given recognition to religious communities in their own right as independent communities with full legal status -- such as the right to own places of worship and the legal protection religious communities normally have in states under the rule of law, according to Forum 18.
Moreover, the survey observed that Christians have been the object of a series of violent attacks and murders in recent years.
The government, the study explained, remains committed to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's "secularism." This involves not only state control of Islam, but also restrictions on the ability of non-Muslims and Muslims outside state control to exercise freedom of religion or belief.
Communities as diverse as Alevi Muslims, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Protestants, and the Syrian Orthodox Church have seen no significant progress in resolving property problems,
the study added.
In fact, even recognized religious communities cannot themselves own properties such as places of worship.
It is virtually impossible to find people from non-Muslim backgrounds in high-level civil servant positions and impossible in senior ranks in the military, the study continued.
Intolerance
Forum 18 listed a number of deadly attacks on Christians in recent years: The murder of Father Andrea Santoro, a Catholic priest in 2006; the killing of two ethnic Turkish Protestants, Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel, and a German, Tilmann Geske in Malatya in 2007. Then, in July 2009 a Catholic German businessman engaged to an ethnic Turk, Gregor Kerkeling, was murdered by a mentally disturbed young man for being a Christian.
Among the causes of this intolerance the study cited the habitual disinformation and defamation against Christians, both in public discourse as well as in the media. As well, intolerance is actively promoted within the school curriculum.
The report concluded by saying that the serious problems with the lack of religious freedom in Turkey casts serious doubts about whether the country is really committed to universal human rights for all.
Of course Turkey is not alone in limiting religious freedom. On Wednesday a report titled: “Global Restrictions on Religion,” was published by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life.
If found that 64 nations -- about one-third of the countries in the world -- have high or very high restrictions on religion. Moreover, because some of the most restrictive countries are very populous, nearly 70% of the world's 6.8 billion people live in countries with high restrictions on religion, the brunt of which often falls on religious minorities. A fact worth meditating on, and praying about, as we celebrate the birth of the child Jesus.
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KYIV — (RISU.ORG.UA) - At a press conference on December 15, 2009, in the Ukrainian House, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) explained the UGCC’s vision of the possibility of uniting the Kyivan Church and presented the Address of the Synod of Bishops of the UGCC of 2009 to the journalists and the public. One of the main themes of the address was the UGCC’s vision of the possibility of unifying the four branches of the Kyivan Church: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyivan Patriarchate, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in one national church.
“We realize that our nation lacked unity and, in addition to the preservation of unity between us, the Greek Catholics, we wish to make all efforts to restore the unity we once enjoyed at the time of St. Volodymyr’s baptism,” said Patriarch Lubomyr.
Like in the previous one, this year’s address stresses that the holiness of the people, the purpose for which the church functions, is impossible without unity – its main attribute. The head of the UGCC explained that unity is not to be seen as something external. According to him, it primarily means accepting each other. “Unity is peace,” added the patriarch.
The synod expressed its proposals to restore the unity, namely, the Ecclesiastic Communion model of unity. “Instead of the monopoly ownership of Christian Ukraine, which was a characteristic of the past, we suggest the Ecclesiastic Communion unity of the today’s divided Kyivan Church,” quoted the head of UGCC from the address.
According to Patriarch Lubomyr, the establishment of one national church is to occur through communion, the unity in faith with the preservation of the liturgical and service specificities of each branch. “We are all equal… We have to be the same only in holy faith, whereas certain elaborations, traditions can be different. We have to learn to be tolerant of each other, accept each other as we are, and not insist on the necessity for all to be made like one particular branch,” stated the patriarch.
According to the press-service of UGCC, the hierarch also explained that the unity of the church must grow from inside, within each branch of the Kyivan Church in order to bring peace and understanding to Ukraine.
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CWNews.com - The bishops of Kerala-- the home of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church-- have reached an agreement with Syrian Jacobite and Syrian Orthodox leaders to share churches outside Kerala for Sunday Mass and to consider sharing cemeteries and the use of priests at funerals. All four churches trace their origin to the evangelization of St. Thomas the Apostle.
Underscoring the agreement’s ramifications beyond India, the Catholic delegation was led by Bishop Brian Farrell, LC, the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity since 2002.
Although the sacred liturgy in both the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is celebrated in Malayalam, the former uses the Chaldean rite, while the latter uses the Antiochan rite. The Syrian Jacobite Church and the Syrian Orthodox Church are not among the Eastern Orthodox churches that ceased communion with the Holy See in 1054; rather, they are among the Oriental Orthodox churches that ceased communion with the Holy See following the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451.
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CWNews.com - In a public statement marked by its ambiguity, the chief ecumenical officer of the Patriarchate of Moscow has praised Pope Benedict XVI for not pushing to arrange a “summit meeting” with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill.
In an interview with the German journal Der Spiegel, Archbishop Hilarion said that the Roman Pontiff “understands the existing difficulties” that trouble relations between Moscow and Rome. The Russian prelate suggested that the late Pope John Paul II did not adequately understand those problems, and was unduly anxious to set up a summit that might have been “just a protocol meeting and handshakes between TV cameras.”
The Russian Orthodox Church wants more results from a meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch, the archbishop said. “We want a breakthrough in our relations.” He then proceeded to list the familiar conditions that the Moscow patriarchate has set for a summit meeting: an end to Catholic “proselytism” in Russia and Eastern Europe, and a resolution of tensions between the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic communities in Ukraine.
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Kyiv - (RISU.ORG.UA) Patriarch Lubomyr comments on the statement of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) Department for External Church Relations that ROC is not against a meeting between its head and Pope Benedict XVI but expects the Vatican to “take concrete steps.”
In response to the statement of Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, of November 5, 2008 that the ROC to show that there is a desire to be cooperative, particularly with regard to Orthodox Churches in Ukraine “forcibly seized by Greek Catholics,” the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Patriarch Lubomyr commented about this situation in an interview for “Dzerkalo tyzhnya”: “If there is a genuine desire for rapprochement, communication, then no conditions will be set to meet and communicate. And if you begin to set conditions ‘you should do this and that, then we will love you,’ this is an absence of genuine desire to communicate, an absence of the real love. The difference between the policy of former and present patriarchs of Moscow is only in its form – lots of talk, but nothing substantially new occurs,” said the head of the UGCC.
As RISU has already reported, Archbishop Hilarion, during an official visit to the Vatican, at a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI (on September 18) and with the cardinal Leonardo Sandri, prefect of Congregation, for the Eastern Churches (on September 17), noted the necessity of concrete practical steps for the “cardinal improvement of situation in the Western Ukraine.”
The relations between Orthodox and Greek Catholics in Ukraine the Archbishop Hilarion remain an obstacle for the dialog between the ROC and RCC. The archbishop did not pass up the opportunity, as has become traditional for ROC, to use the accusation against the Greek Catholics that they partook in the “destruction of three Orthodox eparchies – Lviv, Ternopil’ and Ivano-Frankivs’k.”
In an interview with the Ukrainian BBC service, the head of the UGCC Patriarch Lubomyr commented on the accusations against Greek Catholics expressed by Archbishop Hilarion: “These accusations are expressed continuously but I never heard them proved. I do not know a single example of seizure by us of any Orthodox church building, built by the faithful of the ROC. In 1946, the Russian Orthodox Church received over 500 churches in western Ukraine from the state. One cannot say they were churches of the ROC,” explained the head of the UGCC. According to the hierarch, as the Church was emerging from the underground, unfortunate incidents occurred when communities were divided, which caused great misunderstandings. But it has been long in the past and today there is no such conflict. “I am still awaiting objective proof that Greek Catholics seized any church buildings by force or obstructed the construction of new churches,” said His Beatitude Lubomyr.
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“We can’t even imagine Russia without Ukraine and the Russian Church without its Ukrainian part,” Archbishop Mark told the Yedinoye Otechestvo website.
According to the Archbishop, “the Ruthenian (Ukrainian - editor) flock has been the most active for hundreds of years, Ruthenian hierarchs were the most prominent in Russia, to tear it away would mean a suicide.”
“I still can’t accept Ukraine as being separate from Russia, it doesn’t match my perception of the Russian world,” Archbishop Mark said.