Free Republic

The Maronite Catholic patriarch of Lebanon brought a message of universal forgiveness and mercy Monday to a Uniontown parish overflowing with Lebanese Catholics eager to see him. "Have you ever tried to live in a world without forgiveness? It is a cold, harsh and unbearable world," Patriarch Bechara Peter Rai told 750 people who had greeted him with applause and ululation. St. George Maronite Catholic Church in Uniontown holds 250 people and a tent was erected outside its front door to accommodate 500 more.He said that forgiveness and mercy is needed among Christians, Muslims and Jews, within the Christian church...

The Vatican's top cleric in the heart of Muslim Arabia tends to a flock of 2 million Christians spread around six desert nations. But he has to do it quietly: Most of them must still pray in secret and are forbidden to display crosses and other symbols of their faith. n this image taken Tuesday... From his base in the emirate of Abu Dhabi on the Persian Gulf, Archbishop Paul Hinder travels the Arabian Peninsula, even slipping in and out of Saudi Arabia - the birthplace of Islam, where restrictions on Christians are the toughest.

Father Zakaria Boutros Father Zakaria Boutros looks like a mild-mannered, unassuming priest. But his message is rocking much of the Muslim world.His television program called 'Truth Talk' is broadcast daily into the Middle East over the Al-Hiyat satellite channel. On it, he challenges Muslims to examine what he says are inconsistencies in Islamic doctrine – inconsistencies that he says Muslim leaders don't want exposed and ordinary Muslims are told never to question.“Islam cannot stand in front of intellectual questions and no one can understand because of contradictions in Koran, contradictions in Hadith, contradictions and false doctrines. So they don't...

There is hardly a more resolute supporter of Israel in Congress than Rep. Henry Hyde, the venerable chairman of the House International Relations Committee. That is why his March 25 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell is so important. It is a plea to deflect Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's wall around the Holy Land from its planned position blocking the Scriptural pathway of Jesus Christ. ''I fear that important religious sites will become museums for commercial purposes and will no longer be maintained as places of spiritual worship shared by billions across the world,'' Hyde, a prominent Roman Catholic...