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...On Aug. 29 a militia of Lou Nuer killed 43 people and wounded 62 in Wernyol, a Dinka town. Among the dead was Episcopal Church of Sudan archdeacon Joseph Mabior Garang, killed while officiating at a morning prayer service. Most likely, the militia (and its sponsors) targeted Mabior because he was a prominent, beloved leader in the community. He had recently become archbishop of Twic East diocese, newly formed to accommodate the fast-growing church in Bor county, which is part of Jonglei state in South Sudan. ...After Mabior's death, Daau phoned Nathaniel Garang, the bishop of Bor. "Son, I lost...

The Iranian authorities have ordered the family of a student shot dead in Tehran to take down mourning posters as they struggle to stop her becoming the rallying point for protests against the presidential election. Neda Salehi Agha Soltan, 26, was killed as she watched a pro-democracy protest, and mobile phone footage of her last moments have become a worldwide symbol of Iran's turmoil. The authorities had already banned a public funeral or wake and have prevented gatherings in her name while the state-controlled media has not mentioned Miss Soltan's death. Today it was reported that they had also told...

While Christians in the secular West languish in spiritual mediocrity, Christianity remains a deadly serious matter almost everywhere else...

During the Synod on the Word of God, Archbishop Ramzi Garmou of Teheran for the Chaldeans, soberly remarked: “The whole Bible…tells us that faithfulness to the Word of God leads to persecution….According to the Gospel, persecution is considered as the most eloquent sign of faithfulness to the Word of God.” To say that the only Christians in danger of persecution are those who have not capitulated to the “rights” claimed by the modern state seems paradoxical. Christians in both Muslim and Hindu lands appeal to civil government for protection against persecution. In the post-liberal state, all religions are equally private....

IS THAT A PROMISE?

Fr. Bernard Digal has died after a slow agony of more than two months. The religious, brutally beaten by Hindu fundamentalists the night of August 25, has died two months later, this evening at 9:25 local time, from the serious injuries he suffered in the assault. On Saturday, October 25, a feverish Fr. Digal was taken to St. Thomas Hospital in Chennai, in Tamil Nadu; the doctors operated on him to remove a blood clot from his brain, caused by the beating on the night he was attacked. Yesterday, his lungs collapsed and he fell into a coma. This morning,...

Christians and aid workers are distraught and filled with dismay over the killing of Gayle Williams, an aid worker with Serve Afghanistan, who was gunned down yesterday as she went to work. The Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the murder, claimed that the woman “was working for an organisation which was preaching Christianity in Afghanistan”. This is not the first time that the Muslim fundamentalists have justified killing on religious grounds, but some Catholics doubt that it is real reason behind the British aid worker’s death. Gayle Williams, 34, had been in the country for several years, working with the...

Catholic Online offers the opportunity for our readers to comment on many of our articles. There have been numerous responses to our continued coverage of the horrid persecution of Catholics and other Christians by militant, extremist Hindus in India. Here are just a few: “Please influence CNN and bring this news in public press and TV.” “Let's all ask our Pastors and Priests what we can do as a Catholic community to bring attention to these atrocities. I never see this mentioned in the NY Daily News, Post or WSJ.” “Where are the protests from our democratic form of government...

No end is in sight to the attacks and violence against Christians. In Orissa, where for more than three weeks a pogrom against Catholics and Protestants has been underway, two more killings have been recorded. Iswar Digal and Purinder Pradhan were murdered and cut to pieces. Iswar Digal, was from the the village of Gatringia in the district of Kandhamal; he was stopped on September 20 by a group of Hindu extremists while he and his wife were trying to escape to a refugee camp. Their home was burned. The other victim was from Nilungia. His body was cut to...

The guard at the Carmelite convent in Banduha (Ujjain, Madya Pradesh) has been wounded while trying to protect the sisters; in Karnataka, the Syro-Catholic church of St George in Ujire was devastated and burned; a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes was destroyed in Kolar. This is some of the new violence against Christians recorded today. All of these attacks took place overnight, or in the early morning. The wave of violence, which began in Orissa three weeks ago, has so far killed at least 45, and wounded more than 18,000.

Fr Augustine Kanjamala is a Verbite clergyman who teaches at the University of Mumbai. He appeals to the Churches of the world to “express their protest to the government of India” which has remained “inactive” with regards to anti-Christian violence. He openly charges the Orissa state government for its increasingly explicit collusion with the pogrom currently underway against the community of faithful. According to Father Kanjamala a plan to cleanse Orissa of its Christian population has been in the making for years, especially in the district of Kandhamal (where most of the atrocities have taken place) where Christians now constitute...

Our Times: The Age of Martyrs by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. Never in the history of the papacy has any Bishop of Rome written at greater length about martyrdom than Pope John Paul II. His encyclical The Gospel of Life devotes a thousand or more words to the call to martyrdom in our age.He reminds us that the revelation from the Old Testament to the new, and from the time of Christ to the present day, is the history of martyrdom as a witness to the truth.He names Susanna, who refused to consent to lechery and was ready to...

The stained glass window of Sts. Paul and Peter in St. Mary Mother of God Catholic Church, Washington, DC (The following is excerpted from Dom Prosper Guéranger's entry in The Liturgical Year for 30 June -- the Commemoration of St. Paul, in Volume XII of the 1983 Marian House edition of the English translation by the Benedictines of Stanbrook.) "...Paul, having appealed to Caesar [see Acts 25: 11-12], landed in Italy at the beginning of the year 56. Then at last the apostle of the Gentiles made his entry into Rome...." "Instead of having to await in prison the day...

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the country's economic woes can be solved by the "culture of martyrdom, the Mehr news agency reported. "If we want to build the country, maintain our dignity and solve economic problems, we need the culture of martyrdom," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying in a speech on Wednesday in the western city of Hamedan. He described martyrdom, dying or being killed for one's religious beliefs, as "a quick and shortcut way to reach the summit of salvation." He did not say how becoming a martyr would help the economy, which is struggling...

As if things weren't crazy enough already in the Middle East, here's the officially sanctioned message in sixth-grade Palestinian textbooks for 11- and 12-year-old kids: "The noble soul has two goals: death and the desire for it."...It's Jonestown, writ large, a cult of suicide for the collective, for Palestine. Israel isn't on the maps in the Palestinian textbooks. ...A recent article in Rolling Stone, "The Unending Torture of Omar Khadr," tells the story of a 15-year-old captured by U.S. troops in Afghanistan .... "Born into a fundamentalist Muslim family in Toronto," Omar Khadr "had been prepared for jihad since he...

Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has been critically injured after a suspected suicide attack at a political rally in Pakistan. It was believed to be a suicide attackShe is undergoing emergency surgery at a nearby hospital, Sky News sources say. The explosion went off just after Ms Bhutto left the rally in Rawalpindi, minutes after her speech to thousands of people.

Dear brothers and sisters, The day after Christmas, the liturgy celebrates the 'birth in heaven' of the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen. 'Filled with faith and the Holy Spirit' (Acts 6,5), he was chosen as a deacon by he community if Jerusalem, along with six other disciples who had a Greek education. With the power given to him by God, Stephen performed many miracles and announced the Gospel in the synagogues with "inspired wisdom.' He was stoned at the gates of the city and died, like Jesus, invoking forgiveness for his executioners (Acts 7,59-60). The profound link that united Christ...

Green MartyrdomSeveral months ago I heard a provocative description of martyrdom from Fr. Robert Cook, President of the new Wyoming Catholic College. His idea was that martyrdom in the modern age is not necessarily one of bloody (red) martyrs who die violently for the Faith. Neither is it the daily, silent and sacrificial (white) martyrdom of humble believers. He says that modern martyrs will manifest their heroic courage economically; that is, we will be called to pay dearly for our principles, not necessarily at the cost of lives, but at the cost of dollars. This is “green” martyrdom, and it...

Great vid of terrorist accidentally blowing himself up!

An Iraqi man arrested this month at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport for immigration law violations was charged Wednesday with lying to authorities about his travels outside the United States and about anti-American material he was carrying. When Ali Mohammed Abboud Almosaleh, 40, arrived at the airport on a flight from Amsterdam July 7, he told customs officers he had been out of the country for one month and had traveled to Syria, court documents said. But he actually had been gone for five months and had visited Iraq. He told officers that his digital video discs with images of...

'I Hoped To Be A Glorious Martyr' A woman who was inside Islamabad's Red Mosque when it was stormed by Pakistani troops on 10 July has given the BBC one of the first accounts of the final hours of the siege. Unwilling to be named, the survivor said she was not held hostage by militants inside. More than 100 people died in the army operation - she was one of only 30 women to walk out alive after soldiers went in. Following are excerpts from the interview with Rafia Riaz of the BBC's Urdu service. ..."They asked me to come...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - A new al-Qaida videotape posted Sunday on a militant Web site featured a short, undated clip of a weary-looking Osama bin Laden praising martyrdom. The bin Laden clip, which lasted less than a minute, was part of a 40- minute video featuring purported al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan paying tribute to fellow militants who have been killed in the country. It was posted by the group's media production wing. Bin Laden glorified those who die in the name of jihad, or holy war, saying even the Prophet Muhammad "had been wishing to be a martyr." "The happy...

Part 1- Hamas TV continues promotion of Shahada (martyrdom) for children Part 2- Overview of the history of promotion of children's Shahada – Martyrdom Hamas TV continues active promotion of Shahada (martyrdom) directed at children. The new video clip, broadcast Sunday, follows the growth of a young Palestinian boy from a child into a Hamas Shahid – Martyr for Allah. The video shows the young child going to the mosque, praying and reading from the Quran, and then holding an automatic rifle together with the Quran as he envisions future participation in violent acts.

A letter to the Global Church from The Protestant Church of Smyrna Dear friends, This past week has been filled with much sorrow. Many of you have heard by now of our devastating loss here in an event that took place in Malatya, a Turkish province 300 miles northeast of Antioch, the city where believers were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). On Wednesday morning, April 18, 2007, 46 year old German missionary and father of three Tilman Geske prepared to go to his office, kissing his wife goodbye taking a moment to hug his son and give him the priceless...

Islamic Pro-Terrorism Hate Film Gets PG Rating (Film vilifies Jewish as 'army of pigs') By Liam Houlihan April 15, 2007 A PRO-TERROR hate film that urges children to martyr themselves in Islam's war on the West and calls Jews "pigs" has been rated PG by Australia's censors. Sheik Feiz Mohammed's DVD box set, which also calls for the murder of non-believers, was initially seized by Federal anti-terror police. But the Office of Film and Literature Classification has ruled that The Death Series is suitable to be bought and watched by children. The shock decision has seen the nation's peak censorship...

The hanging of Saddam is not a narcissistic injury. It may seem like one, but it's not-- and why it's not makes all the difference in predicting what will happen next. http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2006/12/this_is_not_a_narcissistic_inj.html

Dr. Tawfik Hamid doesn't tell people where he lives. Not the street, not the city, not even the country. It's safer that way. It's only the letters of testimony from some of the highest intelligence officers in the Western world that enable him to move freely. This medical doctor, author and activist once was a member of Egypt's Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Arabic for "the Islamic Group"), a banned terrorist organization. He was trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the bearded jihadi who appears in Bin Laden's videos, telling the world that Islamic violence will stop only once we all become Muslims. He's a...

If the Democrats think the Islamic Jihadists will respect them more than President Bush then read this! This is an article everyone needs to read. If you think that because you refuse to be politically incorrect and see these inhuman animals for what they are that they will somehow respect you enough not to do to you what they did to these young girls, then think again! It will get worse. Beheaded girls were Ramadan ?trophies? THREE Christian high school girls were beheaded as a Ramadan ?trophy? by Indonesian militants who conceived the idea after a visit to Philippines jihadists,...

The Witness and the Sword As for the murdered Nun, it shows that Christian martyrs die defending and caring for the innocent...while muslim martyrs die killing the innocent. (anonymous commenter on Joee Blogs) In the Christian tradition, martyrs are witnesses, those who take their witness of following the way of Christ to its final destination, a life given up out of love, to stand to the last moment saying, "Jesus is Lord," because someone else has decided that they were worthy of death because they were Christian. They were respected because they thought love of the Lord was worth...

August 29, 2006 Memorial of the Martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist Psalm: Tuesday 36 Reading 12 Thes 2:1-3a, 14-17 We ask you, brothers and sisters,with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christand our assembling with him,not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly,or to be alarmed either by a “spirit,” or by an oral statement,or by a letter allegedly from usto the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand.Let no one deceive you in any way. To this end he has also called you through our Gospelto possess the glory of our Lord...

Without question, after the Latin Vulgate, no vernacular translation of the Bible has had more impact on Christian life and culture in general than the King James Version. What is seldom noted with the King James Version is busy being praised to the skies for its various qualities, is that it was a translation that owed an enormous amount of its diction and memorable phrasing to its English predecessor versions, especially the partial OT and the entire NT that William Tyndale finished, and at the other end of the discussion the KJV went through various revised editions. But the story...

Police charge terror suspects (Filed: 21/08/2006) Eleven suspects arrested over the alleged airliner bomb plot have been charged as police revealed they have found bomb-making equipment and martyrdom videos. Police arrested 23 after the discovery of the alleged plot Ahmed Abdullah Ali, Tanvir Hussain, Umar Islam, Arafat Waheed Khan, Assad Ali Sarwar, Adam Khatib, Ibrahim Savant and Waheed Aman are all charged with conspiracy to murder and with an offence under section five of the Terrorism Act 2006. Another three suspects have been charged with other offences under the Terrorism Act 2000. Susan Hemming, head of the Crown Prosecution Service...

Poland: Auschwitz martyr Kolbe remembered By ASSOCIATED PRESS WARSAW, Poland A leading Roman Catholic official led a Mass at Auschwitz on Monday to mark the 65th anniversary of the death of Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan friar who gained martyrdom by volunteering to die in the place of another man at the Nazi death camp. Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the archbishop of Krakow and the longtime secretary to the late Pope John Paul II, led the ceremony for the Polish friar whose action during World War II carries symbolic weight for the church and Catholic-Jewish relations. Kolbe was sent to Auschwitz in...

BEIRUT — A sister of Hizbollah fighter Mustafa Zalzali wears mourning black for her brother, but his death in battle with Israel elicits more pride than grief. "We thank God almighty for making us the family of a martyr," she said. "We received the news of his martyrdom with pride," she told Hizbollah's Manar television. Hizbollah fighters are well armed and trained. But one of the group's greatest assets in its war with Israel is the willingness of its fighters to die for their cause. Hizbollah has killed 33 Israeli soldiers, including some of the army's best, in the war...

Egyptian TV Promoting Anti-Semitism and Child "Martyrdom" 18:27 Jul 04, '06 / 8 Tammuz 5766 by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz As Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak portrays himself as an honest broker in the Middle East, recent Egyptian TV programs inculcate Arab children with Jew-hatred and the desire for Jihad death. Egyptian cleric Sheikh Muhammad Sharaf Al-Din appeared on a children's program on Al-Nas television on June 21, 2006, and told a story from Islamic tradition in which a Jewish woman tried to poison Muhammad. After telling the story, in which the prophet of Islam is miraculously spared, the sheikh took a call...

Persecution and martyrdom of Christians under 20th century totalitarianism - mainly of Russian Orthodox Christians under Bolshevism - is by far the greatest crime in all of recorded history. It is several times greater than the Holocaust in terms of innocent lives brutally destroyed. It has killed more Christians in a few decades than all other causes put together in all ages, with Islam a distant second as the cause of their death and suffering. And yet it still remains a largely unknown, often minimized, or scandalously glossed over crime. According to the respected and reliable OUP World Christian...

Arab Intellectuals Praise Martyrdom in Discussion on Syrian TV ... "Martyrdom is the Most Noble Sacrifice One Can Make for the Cause" ... "The Mother in Our Arab and Islamic History Has Always Sacrificed Her Children and Prepared Them for Martyrdom"... "As Long as There are Mothers Who Give Birth, the Processions of Martyrs Will March On"...

BOOKS of hate promoting suicide bombings, anti-Australian conspiracies and racism can be freely sold in the Muslim community after a ruling that they don't breach sedition laws. The material, found by The Daily Telegraph in Lakemba and Auburn bookstores last year, was judged by federal authorities not to incite violence in the first known test of anti-terrorism laws. Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said last night he felt uneasy about the continuing threat posed by such material remaining on the streets. But he said NSW Police would abide by the "qualified and considered legal opinion" offered by the Commonwealth Director of...

Christian martyr in 'European' Turkey Wlodzimierz Redzioch The Catholic organisation Aid to the Church in Need is alarming: the times of persecutions and Christian martyrdom have returned, hostility towards the Catholic Church is increasing everywhere and Christianophobia also appears in the liberal-libertarian societies of the West. Christians' life is especially hard and dangerous in the Islamic countries. Recently we have had another evidence of that - the murder of Father Andrea Santoro, an Italian missionary priest who was killed in Turkey. This crime is shocking because he was killed in the country that is called 'secular' and aspires to enter...

Pastor Hussein Adan Ahmed, 44, passed away in Afgoye, Southern Somalia, on March 20, 2006. He left behind a wife, Fatima Mohammed Nur, and seven children. Pastor Hussein died as a result of severe head injury he had previously received when imprisoned for his Christian witness. Pastor Hussein, a teacher by training, was arrested by Somalia’s KGB style National Security Service in 1986 after Mohammed Adunyo, the Director of the school he was teaching, accused him of propagating Christianity among the students. Pastor Hussein was immediately put behind bars in Afgoye. Pastor Hussein was transferred to the notorious Mogadishu Central...

Provocation-on-wheels? 28.02.2006 A very special ‘touring’ exhibition is on view in the western Polish city of Poznan. The city’s trams are displaying images of ‘modern martyrs’ who, it is claimed, have died at the hands of Muslims or in Muslim nations. Is this a good idea in the light of the ‘cartoon controversy’ that has swept the world this month? Report by Michal Kubicki 28.02.06 Among those depicted on the posters are the Italian priest Andre Santoro who was killed by a young Muslim fanatic in Turkey four weeks ago and a Polish nun who was mortally injured three years...

Police in northern India thwarted a plot by Hindu extremists who threatened to burn to death more than 60 Christian converts if they refused to return to Hinduism by Sunday. Members of a Christian movement called Believers Church met peacefully Sunday in the state of Himachal Pradesh, according to Compass Direct, a news service that monitors persecution of Christians. "We were able to meet without incident," said Ramish Masih Battih, the son of Pastor Feroz Masih.

On the anniversary of 11 September 2001 Our Lady of New York Witold Zych 'Never forget! Pray for all the innocent victims and heroes who died in the terrorist attack on America, September 11, 2001'. These words have been engraved on a low relief made by Andrzej Pitynski and affixed on a granite base of his Katyn 1940 Memorial. The monument is in Jersey City on the Hudson River, opposite Manhattan. The plaque shows in a symbolic way, and as seen from the perspective of the place the monument is situated, one of the most dramatic moments in the history...

Laura Mansfield: Iran bringing “many divers, sophisticated technology” to Gulf of Mexico Earlier this year, a top Iranian General made the following boast: “Iran is the biggest military power in the region (with) 10 million volunteers for martyrdom operations ... to turn Iran into a terrible nightmare for the United States,” General Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, deputy commander of Iran’s hardline Revolutionary Guards, told the Kayhan newspaper. This summer, the BBC reported an ad in an Iranian publication has calling for volunteers for "martyrdom operations" against the enemies of Islam. The ad was published by an institute managed by one...

© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com An Iranian movement says it now has recruited 40,000 human "time bombs" to carry out suicide attacks against Americans in Iraq and Israel. The movement -- called the World Islamic Organization's Headquarters for Remembering the Shahids [Martyrs] -- says the volunteers want to carry out "martyrdom operations to liberate Islamic lands," according to a report broadcast by Al-Arabiya TV and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI. Last year, Insight Online magazine reported the movement, which at the time claimed 10,000 recruits, was signing up members on the Internet. In the July 2 television...

New Hamas women's units help aim of wiping out Israel September 10, 2005 The Palestinian Hamas movement recently established women's units as part of its terrorist wing, reports the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI. In an interview with the Hamas weekly Al-Risala, the commander of the first of the units, part of the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, said the women were training with light weapons and "yearned for martyrdom." The following are excerpts translated by MEMRI. Q: To begin with, we would like to know who you are. A: We are a women's unit of Hamas' armed wing,...

August 29, 2005Memorial of the Martyrdom of Saint John the Baptist Psalm: Monday 38 Reading I1 Thes 4:13-18 We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,about those who have fallen asleep,so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.For if we believe that Jesus died and rose,so too will God, through Jesus,bring with him those who have fallen asleep.Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord,that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord,will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep.For the Lord himself,...

Iranian President Elect Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad went on al Jazeera television, the network of terrorist sympathizers, and proclaimed that martyrdom was an art, "beautiful, divine and eternal."

WITHIN days of being installed as Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative son of a blacksmith, has won the first round in the biggest confrontation with the West since the seizure of the US embassy a quarter of a century ago. He has called the bluff of the UN's nuclear watchdog and restarted Iran's nuclear fuel enrichment programme, receiving in return a mere slap on the wrist. Ahmadinejad is hailed by the poor as an Iranian Robin Hood because of the promises to distribute Iran's oil wealth that won him a landslide victory. But he combines this with appeals to...

Iran: Islam will conquer world President Ahmadinejad: 'Is there art more beautiful, more divine than ... martyrdom?' Islamic revolution will conquer the world,' says Ahmadinejad Photo: Reuters Iranian president praises suicide terror Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: 'Is there art more beautiful, more divine than... martyrdom?' ; vows: 'Islamic revolution will conquer world' By Ynetnews MEMRI , the Middle East translation service, has translated a video from Iranian state television in which the Iranian president-elect glorifies suicide terrorism, and expresses his desire to see Islam “conquer” the world. “Is there art that is more beautiful, more divine, and more eternal than the art...