National congress for laity in Angola ‘decisive milestone for Church’

Pope Francis meets with members of the AVSI Foundation for the ‘Open Hospitals’ Project in Syria at the Vatican’s Clementine Hall, Sept. 3, 2022. / Vatican Media

Rome Newsroom, Sep 3, 2022 / 12:30 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis’ representative in Syria has said people are losing hope as the Syrian civil war continues and widespread poverty explodes.

“I’ve seen so many people die, I’ve seen young people die too, now I see hope dying,” Cardinal Mario Zenari told CNA Sept. 2.

“It is clear that hope is there, but it is far away. Sooner or later there will also come a future for Syria but currently it is so complicated, isn’t it?” he said. “And hope is lacking, hope is dying.”

Zenari, apostolic nuncio in Syria since 2008, met Pope Francis Sept. 3 with members of AVSI, a nonprofit supporting Project Open Hospitals in Syria.

Pope Francis praised the initiative, which supports free services through three Syrian hospitals and four walk-in clinics, calling it “the ‘creativity of charity,’” a phrase of Saint John Paul II.

“International observers tell us that the crisis in Syria continues to be one of the most serious worldwide, in terms of destruction, growing humanitarian needs, social and economic collapse, and poverty and famine at dire levels,” the pope said Sept. 3.

“In the face of such immense suffering,” he said, “the Church is called to be a ‘field hospital’ and to heal wounds both physical and spiritual.”

Speaking to CNA a day ahead of the papal meeting, Zenari explained that while “fewer bombs are falling,” especially in the north of Syria, another, noiseless, bomb has detonated, that of a poverty crisis.

The nuncio said more than 90% of the population is living under the poverty threshold and statistics show that many children are going hungry or are malnourished.

In his speech Saturday, Pope Francis thanked the group for the gift of an icon of Jesus the Good Samaritan.

“The man in the Gospel parable, beaten, robbed and left half-dead by the side of the road, can serve as another tragic image of Syria, beaten, robbed and abandoned for dead on the roadside,” Francis said.

Yet Syria has not been forgotten or abandoned by Christ, he continued, nor by the many “Good Samaritans” — individuals, associations, and institutions — which have lended a hand.

Cardinal Zenari recalled that “some of these Good Samaritans,” as many as a few hundred according to the United Nations, were killed while working or volunteering in Syria.

“And these are beautiful signs of hope,” he said. 

A priest and Franciscan friar belonging to the Custody of the Holy Land told CNA Friday that Syria is in need of people who work with the sick, the hungry, traumatized children, and those suffering from depression because of the civil war.

“So right now we need Good Samaritans in Syria,” Father Fadi Azar said.

Azar has been serving in Syria since 2015. For the last three years he has been based in the port city of Latakia, where his parish has grown from 200 to 750 families, he said, due to the influx of Syrians fleeing other parts of the country. 

The priest, who was born and raised in Jordan to Palestinian parents, understands the plight of refugees.

Father Azar also helps run one of the walk-in medical clinics supported by Project Open Hospitals.

“Everyday life is becoming more difficult for the people and a lot of them are dying because they cannot afford to buy their medications,” he explained, calling Project Open Hospitals “an intervention of Divine Providence,” and “a miracle.”

“Our work as religious should be only spiritual,” Azar said, “but right now we are operating in humanitarian [needs].”

Pope Francis said: “When we think of Syria, there comes to mind the verse of the Book of Lamentations: ‘Vast as the sea is your ruin; who can heal you?’ (2:13). Those words refer to the sufferings of Jerusalem, but they also make us think of the suffering endured by the Syrian people in these twelve years of violent conflict.”

“If,” he said, “we consider the number of the dead and wounded, the destruction of entire quarters and villages, as well as important infrastructures, including healthcare institutions, it is natural to ask: ‘Syria, who can now heal you?’”

[…]

Washington D.C., Apr 10, 2017 / 11:38 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Following the murder of Christians in Egypt through two bombings during Palm Sunday liturgies, bishops around the world joined Pope Francis in prayer.

“We also pray for our Coptic Orthodox sisters and brothers who continue to be resilient in the face of ongoing and escalating attacks, and who resist the urge to react vengefully or reciprocally,” said Bishop Angaelos, general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the United Kingdom.

Two Egyptian Coptic Orthodox churches in Alexandria and Tanta, in the north of the country, were bombed during their Palm Sunday services. The attacks killed at least 44 and injured more than 100, Reuters reported. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the bombings.

In Tanta, an explosion rocked Mar Gerges Coptic Orthodox church during the Palm Sunday liturgy. A state investigation said it was a suicide bombing. A bomb had been found and disabled at the church a week before, a police official told Reuters.

Shortly afterward, a suicide bomber rushed the outside of the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Alexandria where Tawadros II, Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, was celebrating the liturgy, and detonated his explosives. Security details had reportedly been placed outside of both churches.

The attacks came only weeks before Pope Francis plans to visit Egypt to promote peace and dialogue between Christians and Muslims in the country. Pope Francis, after celebrating Palm Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Square, decried the violence and asked God to “convert the hearts of those who sow fear, violence and death, and those who make and traffic arms.” He also expressed solidarity with Tawardos II.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi declared a state of emergency in Egypt following the attacks. Sunday’s atrocities follow a months-long spike in anti-Christian violence in Egypt, particularly in the country’s Sinai region.

In December, 29 died in a bombing of a chapel next to St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox cathedral in Cairo, where ISIS took credit for the attack.

Then several Christians were attacked and killed in their homes and villages by ISIS affiliates in the Sinai region in the following months. Hundreds fled their homes as a result of the violence. In total, 40 were reported killed in the bombing and in the ensuing three months.

The advocacy group In Defense of Christians voiced their “solidarity with Egypt, particularly Egypt’s Christian community,” and senior advisor Andrew Doran stated that “we call on Egypt’s government to use all necessary means to make places of worship in Egypt safe, especially those systematically targeted by terrorists.”

Bishops in the U.S. also condemned the bombings and declared their solidarity with Christians in Egypt.

“They were at Church. They were praying. And in the midst of what should be peace, horrible violence yet again,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston-Galveston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Sunday.

“Our Holy Father has pointed out – and it’s something that the statisticians have pointed out in recent years – that there are more Christians dying for the faith today than ever happened under the Roman authorities at the time of the pagan empire,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. said at the end of Palm Sunday Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington.

Ultimately, the greatest thing Christians can do for their brothers and sisters in Egypt is pray, especially during Holy Week, the bishops said.

“May Our Lady, Queen of Peace, intercede for us as we pray for an end to all violence,” Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington reflected on Sunday.

“So I would ask you today, and during this Holy Week when you are lifting up your hearts in prayer, to remember them [the Coptic Christians],” Cardinal Wuerl emphasized.

“They have no voice. They have no one to speak for them. They have no one to stand up for them. But we can at least remember them as part of the Body of Christ being crucified in our day today. We pray for them.”

Cardinal DiNardo joined in Pope Francis’s prayers for the victims, the perpetrators, and those trafficking in weapons.

“I also pray for the nation of Egypt, that it may seek justice, find healing, and strengthen protection for Coptic Christians and other religious minorities who wish only to live in peace,” he said.

Bishop Angaelos viewed the suffering of Egypt’s Christians through the mysteries of Holy Week and Easter Sunday

“As we celebrate Palm Sunday today and Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, we now also mark the entry of those who have passed today into the heavenly Jerusalem,” he said of the bombings. “As we continue into the Holy Week of our Savior, we share in the pain and heartbreak of their families and of all those affected by today’s incidents.”

“As we celebrate the Feast of the glorious Resurrection at the end of this week, we are reminded that our life here on earth is a journey often filled with pain, at the end of which is a promised glorious and eternal life void of such suffering and evil.”

[…]

Makurdi, Nigeria, May 7, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the wake of an attack that left two priests and 17 worshippers dead, Nigerian clergy are condemning the passivity of government security forces and pleading for more aid in defense against t… […]