The Dispatch
Month: May 2017
Special Report
As African droughts continue, Catholic churches provide aid, support
NAIROBI, Kenya | Many parts of Africa are experiencing significant droughts, and the contribution of the African Catholic Church to humanitarian aid in these drought-stricken regions is significant. In the convoys delivering food, water and […]
News Briefs
Let’s continue to grow in unity, Francis urges Coptic Orthodox patriarch
Vatican City, May 10, 2017 / 11:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Following his trip to Egypt last month, Pope Francis sent a message Wednesday to the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Tawadros II, expressing his hope that their Churches will continue to work toward unity in the sacraments.
“Along this path we are sustained by the powerful intercession and example of the martyrs. May we continue to advance together on our journey towards the same Eucharistic table, and grow in love and reconciliation,” Pope Francis said in his letter to the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch May 10.
“I take this opportunity to offer my prayerful best wishes for your peace and health, as well as my joy and gratitude for the spiritual bonds uniting the See of Peter and the See of Mark.”
Pope Francis’ message marked the fourth anniversary of his meeting with Tawadros II in Rome on May 10, 2013; the day has become an annual celebration of fraternal love between the Catholic and Coptic Orthodox Churches.
Pope Francis and the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch also met April 28 during Francis’ two-day trip to Cairo. During the encounter, the two signed a joint declaration indicating their gratitude for the chance “to exchange a fraternal embrace and to join again in common prayer.”
In his letter to the patriarch, Francis thanked the leader for his hospitality and for the common prayer they shared during the meeting.
He also noted, in particular, the agreement made that both Churches would acknowledge the validity of baptisms performed in the other Church.
Quoting from the statement, Francis said he is “especially grateful that we have strengthened our baptismal unity in the body of Christ by declaring together ‘that we, with one mind and heart, will seek sincerely not to repeat the baptism that has been administered in either of our Churches for any person who wishes to join the other.’ Our bonds of fraternity ‘challenge us to intensify our common efforts to persevere in the search for visible unity in diversity, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit’.”
The Pope also gave assurance of his continued prayers for Tawadros II and for peace in Egypt and the Middle East. He called on the Holy Spirit, especially during the Easter season, to “fill our hearts with his grace and kindle in them the fire of his love.”
“May the Spirit of peace bestow on us an increase of hope, friendship and harmony,” he continued.
He concluded the letter saying that “with these sentiments, on this special occasion which has rightly become known as the day of friendship between the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, I exchange with Your Holiness a fraternal embrace of peace in Christ our Lord.”
The Coptic Orthdox Church is an Oriental Orthodox Church, meaning it rejected the 451 Council of Chalcedon, and its followers had historically been considered monophysites – those who believe Christ has only one nature – by Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, though they are not considered so any longer.
The May 2013 meeting between Francis and Tawadros marked the first visit of a Coptic Orthodox patriarch to Rome in 40 years. Shenouda III, Tawadros’ predecessor, visited Bl. Paul VI in 1973, and St. John Paul II returned the visit to Egypt in 2000.
News Briefs
Filipino bishops praise cross-country march against death penalty
Lingayen, Philippines, May 10, 2017 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic bishops of the Philippines have praised a cross-country march showing opposition to the restoration of the death penalty.
The bishops voiced their support of the “comm… […]
News Briefs
Pope: Mary’s ‘yes’ echoes the joy, suffering of every mother
Vatican City, May 10, 2017 / 05:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Days before his trip to Fatima, Pope Francis said Mary’s ‘yes’ at the Annunciation was more than a yes to bearing the Son of God, but was also an acceptance of everything she would endure after – something every mother experiences with a new child.
“It was not easy to answer with a ‘yes’ to the angel’s invitation; yet she, a woman still in the flower of youth, answers with courage, despite not knowing anything about the fate that awaited her.”
“Mary at that moment looks like one of the many mothers of our world, brave to the extreme when it comes to welcoming in her womb the story of a new human being who is growing,” he said May 10.
Her ‘yes’ to the angel at the Annunciation was just the first step “in a long list of obedience” leading to the moment she stands at the foot of her Son’s cross, the Pope said.
During his general audience, Pope Francis centered his catechesis on the few lines from the Gospel of John that describe Mary “standing by the cross of Jesus.” Though Mary is largely a silent figure in the Gospels, she listens and “ponders every word and every event in her heart.”
“The Gospels are laconic, and extremely subtle. They record with a simple verb the presence of the Mother: She ‘was standing,’ she was standing,” he said, noting that “nothing is said of her reaction: if she weeps, if she does not weep … nothing; not even a brushstroke to describe her grief.”
Throughout history poets and painters have imagined this moment in art and literature, “but the Gospels just say, she was ‘standing.’ She was there, in the worst moment, in the cruelest time, and suffered with her son,” but “she was standing,” Francis said.
Though there had been a “slow eclipse” of her presence in the Gospels, she returns at this crucial moment when many others had fled.
“Mothers do not betray, and at that moment, at the foot of the cross, none of us can say whose was the cruelest passion; whether that of an innocent man who dies on the scaffold of the cross, or the agony of a mother who accompanies the last moments of her son’s life,” he said.
And she doesn’t get angry or protest: she simply stands and listens, Pope Francis said, pointing to the relationship between listening and the virtue of hope.
Despite everything, even the “deepest darkness,” Mary does not leave, but stands faithfully, he said. “That’s why we all love her as a Mother…We are not orphans: we have a Mother in heaven, who is the Holy Mother of God.”
Mary, he said, teaches to us “the virtue of waiting, even when everything seems meaningless: she is always confident in the mystery of God.”
Even though she didn’t know what the outcome of her Son’s Passion would be, she is loyal to the plan of God, just as she promised to the angel “on the first day of her vocation,” Francis said, explaining that it is also part of her motherly instinct to suffer for her child.
“The suffering of mothers: We have all known strong women that braved the many sufferings of their children!” he said.
Even in the first days of the Church, before Christ’s resurrection is known and the disciples are all afraid, the “Mother of Hope” stays, Francis said. “She was simply there, in the most normal of ways, as if it were a natural thing.”
Thus, he concluded, “in moments of difficulty, Mary, the Mother Jesus has given to us all, can always support our steps, can always say to our heart: ‘Get up! Look ahead, look at the horizon,’ because she is a Mother of Hope.”
News Briefs
Vatican astronomer: If you’re afraid of science, you don’t have faith
Vatican City, May 10, 2017 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, who has worked as an astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican for more than 20 years, told journalists Monday that faith and reason are hardly at odds.
“If you have no faith in your faith, that is when you will fear science,” Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J., said May 8.
He spoke to journalists at a press conference ahead of a May 9-12 summit on “Black Holes, Gravitational Waves, and Space-Time Singularities” being held in Castel Gandolfo at the Vatican Observatory, just outside Rome.
Presser w/ Br. Guy Consolmagno (@specolations) & col. on Vatican conference on Black Holes, Gravitational Waves & Space-Time Singularities pic.twitter.com/Q8FYJMD2y5
— Hannah Brockhaus (@HannahBrockhaus) May 8, 2017
“The Vatican Observatory was founded in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII to show that the Church supports good science, and to do that we have to have good science,” Br. Consolmagno said, explaining the reasoning behind the conference.
The hope is that the encounter will foster good science, good discussion, and even friendship. Among the speakers will be a Nobel Prize winner in physics and a Wolf Prize winner.
Among the topics of papers being presented at the conference are Strong evidence for an accelerating universe; Black hole perturbations: a review of recent analytical results; and Observing the Signature of Dynamical Space-Time through Gravitational Waves.
“Those of us that are religious, will recognize the presence of God, but you don’t have to make a theological leap to search for the truth,” Br. Consolmagno said. “There are many things we know we do not understand. We cannot be good religious people or scientists if we think that our work is done.”
The summit is also taking place in recognition of Fr. Georges Lemaître, the Belgian physicist and mathematician who is widely credited with developing the “Big Bang” theory to explain the origin of the physical universe.
Addressing common misconceptions surrounding the Big Bang, such as the idea that it did away with the need for a creator, Br. Consolmagno said the solution isn’t just to put God at the beginning of things and call that good, either.
“The creative act of God is not something that happened 13.8 billion years ago,” he said. “God is already there before space and time exist. You can’t even say ‘before’ because he is outside of time and space.”
The creative act is happening continuously: “If you look at God as merely the thing that started the Big Bang, then you get a nature god, like Jupiter throwing around lightning bolts.”
“That’s not the God that we as Christians believe in,” he went on. “We must believe in a God that is supernatural. We then recognize God as the one responsible for the existence of the universe, and our science tells us how he did it.”
The organizer of the conference, Fr. Gabriele Gionti, S.J., said Fr. Lemaître always distinguished between the beginnings of the universe and its origins.
“The beginning of the universe is a scientific question, to be able to date with precision when things started. The origins of the universe, however, is a theologically charged question.”
Answering that question “has nothing at all to do with a scientific epistemology,” he added.
Br. Consolmagno commented that “God is not something we arrive at the end of our science, it’s what we assume at the beginning. I am afraid of a God who can be proved by science, because I know my science well enough to not trust it!”
“An atheist could assume something very different, and have a very different view of the universe, but we can talk and learn from each other. The search for truth unites us.”
He suggested that to demonstrate that the Church and science are not at odds, those who are both church-goers and scientists should make that fact more known to their fellow parishioners.
He threw out some practical ideas, such as setting up a telescope in the church parking lot or leading the parish’s youth group on a nature hike.
The Church, in a sense, developed science through the medieval universities she founded, he explained. For example, Bishop Robert Grosseteste, a 13th century Bishop of Lincoln and chancellor of Oxford University, helped develop the scientific method and was often cited by Roger Bacon.
“If there is a rivalry” between the Church and science, Br. Consolmagno said, “it’s a sibling rivalry.”
“And it’s a crime against science to say that only atheists can do it, because if that were true, it would eliminate so many wonderful scientists.”
News Briefs
Vatican astronomer: If you’re afraid of science, you don’t have faith
Vatican City, May 10, 2017 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, who has worked as an astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican for more than 20 years, told journalists Monday that faith and reason are hardly at odds.
“If you have no faith in your faith, that is when you will fear science,” Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J., said May 8.
He spoke to journalists at a press conference ahead of a May 9-12 summit on “Black Holes, Gravitational Waves, and Space-Time Singularities” being held in Castel Gandolfo at the Vatican Observatory, just outside Rome.
Presser w/ Br. Guy Consolmagno (@specolations) & col. on Vatican conference on Black Holes, Gravitational Waves & Space-Time Singularities pic.twitter.com/Q8FYJMD2y5
— Hannah Brockhaus (@HannahBrockhaus) May 8, 2017
“The Vatican Observatory was founded in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII to show that the Church supports good science, and to do that we have to have good science,” Br. Consolmagno said, explaining the reasoning behind the conference.
The hope is that the encounter will foster good science, good discussion, and even friendship. Among the speakers will be a Nobel Prize winner in physics and a Wolf Prize winner.
Among the topics of papers being presented at the conference are Strong evidence for an accelerating universe; Black hole perturbations: a review of recent analytical results; and Observing the Signature of Dynamical Space-Time through Gravitational Waves.
“Those of us that are religious, will recognize the presence of God, but you don’t have to make a theological leap to search for the truth,” Br. Consolmagno said. “There are many things we know we do not understand. We cannot be good religious people or scientists if we think that our work is done.”
The summit is also taking place in recognition of Fr. Georges Lemaître, the Belgian physicist and mathematician who is widely credited with developing the “Big Bang” theory to explain the origin of the physical universe.
Addressing common misconceptions surrounding the Big Bang, such as the idea that it did away with the need for a creator, Br. Consolmagno said the solution isn’t just to put God at the beginning of things and call that good, either.
“The creative act of God is not something that happened 13.8 billion years ago,” he said. “God is already there before space and time exist. You can’t even say ‘before’ because he is outside of time and space.”
The creative act is happening continuously: “If you look at God as merely the thing that started the Big Bang, then you get a nature god, like Jupiter throwing around lightning bolts.”
“That’s not the God that we as Christians believe in,” he went on. “We must believe in a God that is supernatural. We then recognize God as the one responsible for the existence of the universe, and our science tells us how he did it.”
The organizer of the conference, Fr. Gabriele Gionti, S.J., said Fr. Lemaître always distinguished between the beginnings of the universe and its origins.
“The beginning of the universe is a scientific question, to be able to date with precision when things started. The origins of the universe, however, is a theologically charged question.”
Answering that question “has nothing at all to do with a scientific epistemology,” he added.
Br. Consolmagno commented that “God is not something we arrive at the end of our science, it’s what we assume at the beginning. I am afraid of a God who can be proved by science, because I know my science well enough to not trust it!”
“An atheist could assume something very different, and have a very different view of the universe, but we can talk and learn from each other. The search for truth unites us.”
He suggested that to demonstrate that the Church and science are not at odds, those who are both church-goers and scientists should make that fact more known to their fellow parishioners.
He threw out some practical ideas, such as setting up a telescope in the church parking lot or leading the parish’s youth group on a nature hike.
The Church, in a sense, developed science through the medieval universities she founded, he explained. For example, Bishop Robert Grosseteste, a 13th century Bishop of Lincoln and chancellor of Oxford University, helped develop the scientific method and was often cited by Roger Bacon.
“If there is a rivalry” between the Church and science, Br. Consolmagno said, “it’s a sibling rivalry.”
“And it’s a crime against science to say that only atheists can do it, because if that were true, it would eliminate so many wonderful scientists.”
News Briefs
A personal look at Fatima’s saintly Sister Lucia
Fatima, Portugal, May 10, 2017 / 12:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Fatima visionary Lucia dos Santos was saintly woman – not because she saw visions of Mary, but because of her raw humanity, simplicity, and even her sense of humor, says the cardinal who opened her cause for canonization.
When asked about the most “saintly” quality Lucia had, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins said it was “her humanity. She was a person that was human.”
“The saints are all human, they are like any other person. Very intelligent, very concrete, very pleasant and welcoming,” he said.
As for Sister Lucia, “she was a very smart, concrete woman.” This can be seen in the way she documented what she saw during the Fatima apparitions, he said, noting that since her cousins had passed away, all of it was done by her alone.
“If Lucia weren’t a concrete, intelligent person, not all of the documentation that’s there would have been done, through which we know the whole story of Fatima,” he said.
But despite to her intelligence and her humanity, the cardinal said the visionary was “very simple,” but was also “a jokester” with a healthy sense of humor.
Cardinal Martins, 85 and the Prefect Emeritus of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, knew Lucia personally during the last few years of her life. He spoke to CNA about his relationship with visionary, sharing memories of Lucia and some of the light-hearted jokes the two of them exchanged.
Who was Lucia?
Lucia dos Santos was the youngest in a family of seven. However, at 10-years-old, she was the oldest of the three shepherd children who witnessed apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary from May-October 1917. The other two were her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who were just 9 and 7, respectively.
While the Marto siblings died shortly after the apparitions, as Mary had predicted, Lucia outlived her cousins by many years, and was the one to write down accounts of everything they had seen.
Shortly after the deaths of her cousins, at age 14 Lucia was sent to attend school with the Dorothean Sisters of Villar, and in 1928 became a sister of St. Dorothy. In 1946, she transferred to the convent of the Carmelite Sisters of Coimbra, Portugal and took the name Sister Maria Lucia of the Immaculate Heart.
She received visions and messages from both Mary and Jesus on several more occasions throughout her life, including the visions in 1925 that led to the Five First Saturday devotions, which include saying the rosary, receiving communion and confession, and meditation during the first Saturday of five consecutive months.
Sr. Lucia died in 2005 at the age of 97, at the Carmelite convent of Santa Teresa in Coimbra, where she had lived since 1948.
Memories
Cardinal Martins, who himself is Portuguese, said he had “many interactions” with Sr. Lucia, particularly during his tenure at the Congregation for Saints. He headed the dicastery from 1998-2008, during which he brought forward some 1,320 blesseds, though many were part of large groups done together.
Having lived in Rome for at least three decades, serving in various capacities, the cardinal said he, like the rest of the city, typically takes his vacation in mid-August.
It was during one of these vacations that he accepted an invitation to go to Coimbra and celebrate Mass for the Carmelite sisters on the Aug. 15 Feast of the Assumption. After Mass, the cardinal sat with the community and talked with them for a while, even answering some questions.
“We spoke about everything, they asked whatever questions they wanted, without limits, and I responded,” he said, noting Sr. Lucia was also present, and he was also able to speak with her for the first time.
Lucia “was a very humble person, simple, very intelligent, and very confident,” he said, explaining during another visit, he was again sitting with the community after celebrating Mass for them.
He recalled that there was an empty seat by him, so he motioned for Lucia to come sit next to him.
Martins recalled that once she sat down, she leaned over and told him, “Eminence, you’ve made me your secretary, eh?” After a laugh, the cardinal jested, saying in return, “Sister Lucia, please, don’t say this, I am not worthy of having you as a secretary!”
Martins said Lucia was always full of little quips, and at one point jokingly threatened to stop sending rosaries to the Pope if he didn’t allow the beatification of her cousins – Francisco and Jacinta Marto – to take place in Fatima, rather than in Rome.
At the time, as a rule of thumb both canonization and beatification Masses were held Rome. However, it was Cardinal Martins who later changed this, requesting that beatifications take place in the local diocese instead. His request was approved by Benedict XVI, and the change was made in September 2005.
The cause of Francisco and Jacinta was officially opened in 1946, and although the change hadn’t officially been made yet, they were beatified by St. John Paul II May 13, 2000, the 83rd anniversary of the first apparition, during his third visit to the Fatima shrine.
But a year before the beatification, while plans were still in the works, Lucia had jokingly told Martins to relay to the Pope “if the beatification is not done in Fatima, but in Rome, I, Lucia, won’t send him rosaries anymore.”
The jest was in reference to the fact that in her final years Lucia made rosaries and sent large numbers of them to the Pope, who would distribute them to pilgrims and people he met.
“Clearly, I didn’t say it,” the cardinal said, recalling that on the day of the beatification, both he and Lucia had a brief conversation in the sacristy before the celebration began.
He told Lucia she could be now grateful to the Pope for having approved celebrating the beatification Mass in Fatima. However, Lucia again jested, saying “I’m not grateful to the Pope, absolutely no. I am grateful to God who inspired the Pope for the beatification.”
“This is how it was. With Lucia, we were like siblings,” the cardinal said, adding that Lucia’s humor wasn’t the only thing that stood out about her.
“She was also very intelligent,” he said. People often perceived her as someone “in another world,” who was perhaps a bit disconnected, but in reality, the opposite was true: “she was very concrete, and very intelligent.”
As an example, he recalled that at one point the Carmelite sisters had to build another convent when they exceeded the maximum number of sisters who can live in one of their monasteries.
When it came time to start construction on the convent after plans had been laid, Lucia was the one sent to oversee the project, making sure the architect built new monastery according to the specifics of how Carmelite convents are organized.
“Lucia went in car to tell the architects concretely how they had to do the cloister. This is a very concrete person, no?” the cardinal said. “She wasn’t an abstract person like many thought, no.”
Cause for Canonization
After Lucia passed away in 2005, the diocese had to wait five years before opening the beatification cause, as is custom in any potential saint.
However, after just two years, Cardinal Martins asked Benedict XVI to grant a dispensation for the three remaining years, allowing them to open the cause immediately.
I began the process of beatification. Certainly she knows, that to begin the beatification process for a person, five years need to pass after their death. Five years. To research the person, talk to people, etc.
Martins said he asked for the dispensation because “it’s a very big grace for the Church in Portugal and for the universal Church.” In response, Benedict granted it, saying “you know the situation better than me, so let’s do whatever you say.”
A few days later, the cardinal traveled to Coimbra with the official decree in hand. However, since the news hadn’t yet been made official, he was not allowed to say anything, not even to the sisters in Lucia’s convent.
“Everything was secret,” he said, explaining that he simply told the sisters he was passing through and requested to say Mass. “The sisters thought I was passing through Coimbra for another reason, they didn’t know anything about the reason I was there.”
“It was my duty to keep it a secret,” Martins said, recounting how at the end of Mass, before giving the final blessing, he read aloud the decree, signed by himself and the Pope, stating that the beatification process for Lucia would officially begin early.
Immediately “the sisters began to cry,” he said, and were amazed that he hadn’t let on anything of his real intention for coming beforehand.
The local Church in February 2017 finished collecting documents to examine Lucia’s heroic virtue, concluding the diocesan phase of the investigation.
“Now it’s up to the congregation for the Roman phase. They must study the documents gathered on Lucia,” he said, noting that this will be a hefty task given the fact that there are some 300-400,000 letters written by Lucia during her lifetime, including letters written by her and her responses to letters she received from other people.
Although many have speculated that the speed with which Lucia’s cause moves forward could go into turbo-mode with the aim of having a beatification during the centenary year of the apparitions, Cardinal Martins said that given the vast amount of content to study, it will likely still be a while.
News Briefs
Blessing of cross begins rebuilding of Iraqi towns destroyed by Islamic State
Mosul, Iraq, May 9, 2017 / 10:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With the blessing of the cross raised up in the city of Bakhdida May 2, the reconstruction of the towns in the Plain of Nineveh in Iraq destroyed by the Islamic State officially began.
Syrian Catholic Archbishop Youhanna Boutros Moshe of Mosul blessed the cross on a joyous morning with emotive dances by Christians. There are 13,000 damaged houses – 669 of which were completely destroyed by the Islamists – which will be rebuilt in three towns on the Plain of Nineveh: Bartella, Karemlesh, and Bakhdida.
The pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), which is collaborating on the reconstruction, estimated the total cost of the program to be in excess of $250 million.
To date ACN has provided around $500,000 to the Nineveh Reconstruction Commission.
Work has already begun on the rebuilding of 100 Christian homes in the communities, and during a May 8 ceremony the owners of each of the homes were given olive trees to be planted as symbols of peace and reconciliation.
Speaking to CNA Fr. Luis Montes, a missionary priest of the Institute of the Incarnate Word In Iraq, said that “Christians are very hopeful with the beginning of the reconstruction of the cities of the Plain of Nineveh.”
“Most of those who have remained in Iraq – some estimate that they are half of those that originally fled from ISIS more than two years ago, the other half have probably already left the country – want to stay and return to their cities,” he said.
However, he pointed out, “you can’t say the drama is over for several reasons, including the fact that the community has been greatly reduced and that is cause for sadness and for greater weakness both now and especially for the future.”
“In addition recovering all the territories that ISIS has taken doesn’t mean defeating them, because they will continue on as a clandestine group with attacks, just like the other terrorist groups,” he pointed out.
According to the research firm RAND, the Islamic State has lost about 60 percent of the territory it controlled at the height of its power in late 2014.
The largest offensive against the Islamist group conducted since in October 2016 by combined groups of the Iraqi army and the Kurdish Peshmerga militia, recovered villages in the Plain of Nineveh. Currently, the combined groups are fighting for control of Mosul.
Fr. Montes noted that “Iraq has had dozens of attacks a month for more than ten years and that will continue. And you mustn’t forget that once the battle for Mosul is over tensions between the central government in Baghdad and the Kurdistan autonomous region will sharply pick up again.”
“Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that this reconstruction process and the soon return of Christians to their homes isn’t big news. Very big news! But we must keep praying because it’s still a very long road,” he urged.
Fr. Andrzej Halemba, head of ACN’s Near East division, said that with the start of reconstruction work in Bartella, Karemlesh, and Bakhdida, “we want to send a clear signal to the thousands of Christian families driven from their homes in the Plain of Nineveh who now are living in an improvised and provisional way in Erbil, and other localities in Iraqi Kurdistan.”
“This is a decidedly historic moment. If we now miss the opportunity to help Christians return to their homes in the Plain of Nineveh, these families could make the decision to leave Iraq forever, and this would be a huge tragedy.”
For Fr. Halemba “the presence of Christians in this region is of vital importance, but not just from the historical point of view, but also from the political and cultural stance,” since “Christians represent a bridge of peace between the different Muslim groups at odds with each other; they make a crucial contribution to the education system and are respected by all the moderate Muslims.”
The priest appealed for both financial aid and prayers for the Christians in Iraq.
“From all our brothers and sisters in the West we are not just asking for financial aid, but also prayers with which to support the courage of thousands of Iraqi Christians who have made the decision to return to their towns and remain in Iraq.”
By the end of June 2017 ACN, which says it is the only international organization to consistently support the Christian exiles from the Nineveh plain since its capture by the Islamic State, will have spent more than $35 million in supporting the 12,000 Christian internally displaced persons in Kurdistan. Assistance has come in the form of monthly food aid, money for rent, medical help, the construction of schools, and the support of displaced clergy and women religious.
The Dispatch
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” benefits from stronger story, better humor
The Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to expand since its big bang: 2008’s Iron Man. The dizzying rate of this expansion has led creatives to dip into less mainstream characters and stories for material as the […]