News
Byzcath.org News provides news focusing on the Christian East from varous sources and offers links to other sites dedicated to providing the news about the Church.
Churches and organizations that provide news about the Eastern Churches are invited to submit their news stories to us for publication here (use the contact page for submission)..
Materials from the Vatican Information Service, Zenit, CWNews.com and other sources are published here with permission of their owners but may not be republished further without the permission of their original publishers. Please visit these sites to obtain additional general news about the Church. In addition to these sources EWTN News also provides a good general news summary.
Photo: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I embrace.
- Details
Amidst a cathedral of trees once charred by the Aspen Fire, a small chapel is under construction in the mountain village of Summerhaven.
tucson.com - The 853-square-foot Byzantine Catholic chapel is being built on Tucson Avenue just east of the Mt. Lemmon General Store and Gift Shop. If construction proceeds on schedule, the chapel dedicated to Our Lady Undoer of Knots should open this fall for public use.
Other than services in the community center and other buildings, Mount Lemmon resident Bob Zimmerman said he doesn’t know of any other dedicated church building in Summerhaven. Zimmerman’s father opened a sawmill and juggled other endeavors on the mountain after falling in love with the area on a hunting trip in the 1930s. Bob Zimmerman, now 81, spent summers on Mount Lemmon as a child and moved back to Summerhaven in adulthood. He runs Mount Lemmon Realty, Sawmill Run Restaurant and the post office, he said.
“When I had the inn before it burned down, we had church in the ballroom,” he said. The family lost it in the 1970s to fire. “And on Saturday nights after dancing we would clean up and clear out for church the next morning.”
- Details
The following article was published in the Arlington Catholic Herald:
Children hold their icons during a special blessing at Epiphany of Our Lord Byzantine Catholic Church in Annandale March 5 on the Sunday of Orthodoxy.
CatholicHerald.com - Imagine you are a Christian living in the eastern part of the Roman Empire in the eighth century, and your essential instrument of prayer is an image of Jesus, Mary or a saint. Suddenly, the emperor bans the veneration of icons. Soldiers strip holy images from churches, and those caught with an icon are punished. Nearly 100 years later, icons and holy images were welcomed back.
Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Christians commemorate the restoration of holy images on the first Sunday of Lent when they were returned to the empire in 843. The celebration is known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy, and parishioners of Epiphany of Our Lord Byzantine Catholic Church in Annandale marked the day by bringing icons and holy images to be blessed March 5.
Children stood in the church’s aisle during Divine Liturgy, holding icons of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, St. George and other saints to be blessed by Father John G. Basarab, the pastor.
- Details
“Give me tears, O God”
“I want to wash away with tears the record of my sins, O Lord” (Lenten Sunday Vespers, Stichera of repentance, Tone Four)
With this spiritual hymn we welcome Great and Holy Lent. And with the sinful woman, we say in the prayer of Sunday Vespers, “Give me tears, O God, as once thou gavest them to the woman that had sinned; and count me worthy to wash thy feet that have delivered me from the way of error. As sweet-smelling ointment let me offer thee a pure life, created in me by repentance; and may I also hear those words for which I long: `Thy faith has saved thee, go in peace.´” (Lenten Sunday Vespers, Stichera of Repentance, Tone 8)
Beloved, I should like to contemplate with you the power of tears of repentance, along the way of the Fast that leads us to the joy of the Resurrection.
That is why I am setting out for you in this letter, through the Holy Scriptures and the writings of the Holy Fathers, stations to help us stand before the Lord Jesus, who addresses us thus: “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” (Matthew 6: 6)
- Details
CWN - The Knights of Columbus has granted an additional $1.9 million in humanitarian aid to persecuted Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East, bringing its total aid to $12 million since 2014.
“A year ago, our country declared with one voice that genocide was occurring to Christians and other religious minority communities, but words are not enough,” said Carl Anderson, who leads the Knights. He added: "Those targeted for genocide continue to need our assistance, especially since many have received no funding from the U.S. government or from the United Nations. The new administration should rectify the policies it found in place, and stop the de facto discrimination that is continuing to endanger these communities targeted by ISIS for genocide.
References:
- Details
risu.org.ua - Seventy years ago, on March 8-10, 1946, under orders from Josef Stalin, an illegal “synod” of Kremlin-controlled clergy gathered in the city of Lviv, recently absorbed into the Soviet Union as part of the settlement of World War II. The purpose of the gathering was to liquidate the independent existence of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, or rather to “reunite” it with the Russian Orthodox Church. This flimsy ruse derived from the church’s origins as a result of the Union of Brest in 1595 when thousands of faithful and their clergy—the Metropolitanate of Kyiv-Halych—broke away from Eastern orthodoxy to place themselves under the authority and pastoral protection of the Latin Catholic Pope of Rome.
The next three-and-a-half centuries established the church as a thriving spiritual center that was closely connected to rising social and intellectual movements as they struggled to define an identity for nascent Ukrainian populations that found themselves under the serial domination of empires and states in the region.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) included over three thousand parishes, 4,440 churches, five seminaries, and 127 monasteries. Over three million believers were served by three thousand priests, ten bishops, and the metropolitan at the head of the church. As Stalin’s regime moved to subdue and absorb the Western Ukrainians, it was clear that this large and vibrant institution that answered to an authority outside of the state would continue to nurture the same patriotism and independent spirit that had proved so problematic during the first Soviet occupation in 1939-1941. Moreover, during the Second World War, even though the Communist Soviet regime had moved away from strict atheism, recognizing that religion could play a role in supporting the war effort, the imperative to control all religious institutions remained. The “reunification” of the UGCC with the Russian Orthodox Church emerged as the solution. A “synod” was assembled without the participation of any UGCC bishops; those who had been coerced into attending cast their votes and the church was officially absorbed into the Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate along with most of its property. In a cynical move that reinforced the decision, the announcement was made on the first Sunday of Easter Lent, on the 350th anniversary of the Union of Brest. As a result, the UGCC became the largest outlawed church in the world.
Harsh repressions followed. Ukrainian Catholic priests were beaten, tortured, and given long prison sentences. Tens of thousands of religious laity met the same fate. UGCC Metropolitan Josef Slipiy was exiled to a hard labor camp in Siberia. The church went underground: services were held in the forests, or in private homes where they dared. Children were baptized in secret and religious rites performed clandestinely, while the Soviet state continued its assault on priests, monks, nuns, and the Catholic faithful, offering respite within the Russian Orthodox Church or repression as the price for refusal to cut ties with the bishop of Rome.
And yet the flame of resistance endured and provided inspiration as stories of brutality and courage were shared among trusted family members and passed down from one generation to another. Western Ukraine, with its aspirations and support for an independent Ukraine, remained a hotbed for anti-Soviet sentiments and religious diversity. When the long struggle of the underground church finally ended in 1989, only three hundred aged priests remained.
The vitality of the church quickly reasserted itself, with the support of the diaspora, the thousands of Ukrainians who had fled their homeland during the war and settled in North America, Latin America, Europe, and as far afield as Australia.
Today, with a spiritual center in Rome, the recently reestablished Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv and newly built cathedral in Kyiv, the church has thirty-three eparchies and exarchates and fifty-three bishops on four continents, with over three thousand priests whose average age is thirty eight.
The church’s influence on Ukraine’s social and political life has been evident since independence. Students from the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv were some of the first to come to Kyiv in 2004, to support the ideas and aspirations of the Orange Revolution against an authoritarian regime. And in 2013-14, Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity was suffused with the moral values and tolerant attitudes propounded by the church. Its clergy were a daily presence on the Maidan throughout the three months of struggle. Together with the other churches and religious denominations of Ukraine, the UGCC has helped to create an ecumenical and diverse environment for social movements in Ukraine. As a bulwark against authoritarianism, this spirit of ecumenism continues to be Ukraine’s best instrument as it struggles toward becoming a democratic and prosperous state.
Nadia M. Diuk is Vice President—Europe, Eurasia, Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean at the National Endowment for Democracy
- Details
CWN - Pope Francis met on March 16 with Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun, and reportedly promised to visit Lebanon.
An official Vatican statement indicated that the Pope had expressed his satisfaction at the end of a long political deadlock that had left the Lebanese presidency vacant for months, and voiced his hope that cooperation among the country’s different ethnic and religious groups would continue to improve.
The Pope also expressed his gratitude to Lebanon for providing shelter for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syrian. He spoke with Aoun about the prospects for ending that conflict.
After the meeting, Aoun reported that the Pope had told him: “I will visit Lebanon.” (The official Vatican statement did not mention a papal visit.) The Lebanese leader underlined the importance of a papal trip to his country, saying:
The Eastern Christians today live difficult circumstances, in a region that is the cradle of Christianity and Islam, we see in this visit a glimmer of hope that confirms that Lebanon will always remain as the strongest hope for the future of the East and the world
References: