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Egyptian Christians have seen notable gains under the government of President Abd al-Sisi, the spokesman for the country’s bishops tells the AsiaNews service. Father Rafic Greiche pointed to three new building permits for Catholic churches. He reported that permits for Christian churches were never granted during the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak, nor under the government that followed him, which was dominated by Islamic fundamentalists. Some applications for permits to build churches date back more than a decade, Father Greiche said.

The ceremony was attended by Catholic and Orthodox priestsA group of priests celebrated the inauguration of a church made entirely from ice at the Balea Lac resort in the Fagaras mountains of Romania this week. Romanian Orthodox and Catholic priests as well as Protestant ministers took part in the ceremony.

Effectively exiled from his friary in Mosul by the Islamic State last year, Fr. Najeeb Michaeel, O.P. is working to preserve Christian manuscripts through digitization, recording a memory of Iraq's Christian past. Najeeb Michaeel is an Iraqi native who studied in the U.S., and founded in 1990 the Center for the Digitization of Oriental Manuscripts to foster the collection and recording of ancient manuscripts which he had started in the 1980s. Over the years, Fr. Michaeel has collected some 750 Christian manuscripts in order to preserve them and to make them available for study by making digital copies. The archives...

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has called upon MPs to begin a campaign against abortions, starting with canceling state sponsorship for the procedure and aiming at a total nationwide ban. “If we manage to cut the number of abortions by 50 percent we would have stable and powerful population growth,” Patriarch Kirill said, speaking before the Lower House on Thursday. This was the first ever speech of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church before the State Duma. “The argument that a ban would cause an increase in the number of underground abortions is pure nonsense. People have...

Archdiocese of Washington I Keep So Busy Workin’ for the Kingdom, I Ain’t Got Time to Die – A Homily for the 3rd Sunday of the Year By: Msgr. Charles PopeThe readings of “Ordinary Time” (Tempus per annum, in Latin) focus a lot on the call to discipleship and the living of the Christian Faith. The readings for today’s Mass are no exception, as they present us with a number of disciplines for disciples. These disciplines free us to serve Christ and His Kingdom joyfully, energetically, and wholeheartedly. We can group these disciplines into three broad areas, such that discipleship is...

MOSCOW--The head of the Russian Orthodox Church on Thursday delivered a historic first address to parliament in which he urged lawmakers to guard against Western "pseudo values". Speaking to the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, Patriarch Kirill also warned Russians against interfering with "God's plan" by having abortions or using surrogate mothers. Patriarch Kirill's address was the first time the head of the Russian Orthodox Church had delivered a major address to the State Duma in post-Soviet Russia. "The idea of the absolute priority of freedom -- freedom of choice -- and the renunciation of the priority of...

Featured Term selected at random:OMOPHORION A vestment of the Greek Rite corresponding to the pallium in the Roman Church. It is abroad band often of silk or velvet, ornamented with crosses, worn around the neck and over the shoulders and breast. Its is worn by Byzantine, Armenian, and Coptic bishops and archbishops. Originally made of wool, it symbolizes the duties of bishops as shepherds of their people. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Erbil, Iraq, Jan 11, 2015 / 06:01 am (Aid to the Church in Need).- “Thank you, thank you, thank you:” Suheila, an elderly Christian woman from Mosul was effusive in expressing her gratitude to a group of European visitors. "May God make things easy for you in your lives." Home for Suheila is the Sports Club Center in Ankawa, where more than 200 Christian families from Bakhdida (Qaraqosh) have found shelter in mobile homes: "This is really a big improvement. I'm grateful for it. But in general, of course, this is no life. We've lost everything. The worst thing is...

Erbil, Iraq, Jan 9, 2015 / 12:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Emil Nona is the Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul, the Iraqi city overrun by the Islamic State last summer. Since then, he has brought the voice of the Christians of Iraq to the West. "For us the faith is everything. It is our life, our identity, our history and our way of life. We can't separate ourselves from our faith in any way," Archbishop Nona told CNA. "Our faith, which has been in this land for more than 2,000 years, cannot come to an end so easily." He speaks with...

Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has attended the Coptic Christmas mass to mark the first attendance ever made by an Egyptian president to the religious occasion. El-Sisi arrived at Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo's Abbasiya district during the mass and gave a brief speech before leaving instantly. He said that both of Egypt's Muslims and Christians are celebrating this occasion, asserting that they are "one entity" in the world's eyes. He added that he had to come to congratulate the Coptic community and then apologised for interrupting the mass. Video footage broadcast by State TV – covering the full...

St. Simeon Stylites the Elder From the Catholic EncyclopediaSt. Simeon was the first and probably the most famous of the long succession of stylitoe, or “pillar-hermits”, who during more than six centuries acquired by their strange form of asceticism a great reputation for holiness throughout eastern Christendom. If it were not that our information, in the case of the first St. Simeon and some of his imitators, is based upon very reliable first-hand evidence, we should be disposed to relegate much of what history records to the domain of fable; but no modern critic now ventures to dispute the reality of the...

Francis met Syriac Christians during his recent visit to Turkey (CNS) Turkish government gives go-ahead to Syriac church in IstanbulTurkey’s government has given the go ahead for the building of the first new church in the country for nearly a century.The Syriac Orthodox church will be built in Yeşilköy on the outskirts of Istanbul, in an area which already has Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Catholic churches.The announcement was made last Friday, after Turkey’s prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu met Turkey’s religious leaders.He told Turkish media: “It is the first [new church] since the creation of the republic [in 1923]. Churches...

Ankara (AFP) - Turkey's Islamic-rooted government has authorised the building of the first church in the country in nearly a century, officials said Saturday. The church is for the tiny Syriac community in Turkey and will be built in the Istanbul suburb of Yesilkoy on the shores of the Sea of Marmara, which already has Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Catholic churches. The announcement came after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met Turkey's religious leaders in Istanbul on Friday and said no faith that has lived in the country could be regarded as foreign. "It is the first (new church) since the...

As Christians around the world got ready to contemplate the innocence of the child Jesus, last week the Russian Orthodox Church took on a UNICEF paper that says children have LGBT rights.The Patriarch’s Commission on the Family of the Russian Orthodox Church released a scathing statement criticizing a UNICEF position paper that urges countries to protect LGBT rights because, it says, it is in the “best interests of children.” The Commission turns the tables on UNICEF and says: “Placing children to be raised by same-sex couples is a gross violation of the rights and interests of a child.”The Orthodox Commission...

Refugees flee Syria and Iraq to Midyat, Turkey, which clings to its diminished role as the heartland of the ancient Orthodox faith.MIDYAT, Turkey—On most afternoons, Mor Barsaumo, a honey-colored, fifth-century stone church nestled in a warren of slanted streets, draws a crowd. In the narrow courtyard, old men smoke cigarettes and drink coffee, while children kick a soccer ball across the stone floor. In a darkened classroom, empty except for a few desks, a teacher gives private lessons in Syriac, derived from Aramaic, the language of Christ. And now, the refugees also come. Advised by relatives or other refugees, newcomers...

(December 22, 2014, Information Resource of the UGCC) The first step toward unity of the Churches in Ukraine “must be the unification of the Orthodox Churches, because they have no dogmatic difference,” the Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, His Beatitude Sviatoslav maintains. “We pray for that,” he said in an interview with the Internet publication Tsenzor.net. “When one Orthodox Church [in Ukraine] is created, the next step must be the unification of the Orthodox and Catholic sides.” According to remarks by Pope Francis, who recently visited Istanbul and met with Patriarch Bartholomew, the path to unification consists not...

An Orthodox Christian nun, Sister Hatune Dogan, is struggling finding a location that will allow her to speak on the atrocities she has witness in the Middle East and around the globe. Though Sister Hatune has spent her life helping Christians who have been persecuted, and helped countless people in need, the nun has found that her message is not welcome in many communities. What is so controversial about the nun’s speeches? Sister Hatune uses her speaking platform as a way to warn against the atrocities of the Muslim faith. WND reports that Sister Hatune warned of the current state...

By the mercy of God, Patriarch John X, The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and all the East To my brother pastors of the Antiochian Holy Church, and my children throughout the Holy See "Heaven and Earth are made one today, for Christ is born. Today God is come upon the earth, and man is gone up into the Heavens. Today He Who by nature is invisible, for man's sake is seen in the flesh. For this cause, let us also give glory and cry out to Him: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, which Thy...

"It is not a question of if we will conquer Europe, just a matter of when that will happen. But it is certain ... For us, there is no such thing as borders. There are only front lines.”These were the chilling words German journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer heard from an Islamic State militant during his recent, stunning visit behind those “front lines,” in Iraq and Syria. The militant was himself a German, one of hundreds of sympathizers joining the Islamic State’s ranks from Europe and the United States. Todenhöfer, 74, who has been reporting from war zones for 50 years, got...

Since the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine eight months ago, the Kremlin has denied any direct involvement, including sending Russian troops. But there are Russian fighters on the ground who are proud to announce their presence - and to discuss their ideas of "holy war".Even when the morning sun catches the gold domes of its Orthodox churches, the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, stronghold of the pro-Russian rebels, doesn't look much like Jerusalem. Trolley-buses trundle through the dirty snow, past belching chimneys and the slag-heaps from the coal-mines on the edge of town. But through the smoke and grime,...