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EWTN launches Arabic-language news agency based in Iraq

March 25, 2022 Catholic News Agency 0
The logo of ACI MENA, EWTN’s new Arabic-language news agency, based in Erbil, Iraq. / EWTN

Irondale, Ala., Mar 25, 2022 / 07:28 am (CNA).

EWTN Global Catholic Network has launched an Arabic-language news service headquartered in Erbil, Iraq, Michael P. Warsaw, EWTN’s chairman and CEO, announced March 25, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation. 

The Association for Catholic Information Middle East and North Africa, or ACI MENA, will publish original news content in Arabic using a network of correspondents across the region. The news agency will operate from the campus of Erbil’s Catholic University (CUE.) A ceremony marking the occasion was held in Erbil, which included Archbishop Bashar Warda of the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil.

“I am pleased to announce that EWTN has begun a service reporting news from the embattled and underserved Christian communities in the Middle East,” Warsaw said.

“This is an important milestone in the growth of EWTN News around the globe, and I am pleased that we are taking this significant step to better serve our courageous brothers and sisters in the region who have endured so much,” he said.

“Because it is published in Arabic, this agency will also augment the service offered by ACI-Africa, our Nairobi, Kenya-based Catholic news agency, which EWTN launched in 2019 and which publishes content in English, French and Portuguese,” Warsaw added. “ACI MENA will provide a new voice to help spread the Gospel and news of the Church to these Christian communities in their own language.”

Bashar Jameel Hanna, a Chaldean Catholic layman originally from Baghdad, will head EWTN's newly launched Arabic-language news service, ACI-MENA. The service will provide a new voice to help spread the Gospel and news of the Church to Christian communities in the Middle East and North Africa. EWTN
Bashar Jameel Hanna, a Chaldean Catholic layman originally from Baghdad, will head EWTN’s newly launched Arabic-language news service, ACI-MENA. The service will provide a new voice to help spread the Gospel and news of the Church to Christian communities in the Middle East and North Africa. EWTN

Hanna studied philosophy and theology for nine years at the Babel College in Iraq and graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the University of Nantes in France. Hanna speaks Arabic, French, English, and Aramaic fluently, and has a significant understanding of classic Arabic.

“When war came around to Iraq, I lost friends and relatives and became a political refugee in Europe,” Hanna said. “Ten years later, I received a call to work on the reconstruction in the Nineveh plains, to rebuild the church of Mosul. Then, late last year, I received a call for the position of Editor-in-Chief with ACI MENA. And I heard the Lord say: ‘I took you from the ends of the earth; from its farthest corners I called you. I said, you are my servant; I have chosen you and have not rejected you’ (Isaiah 41:9.)”

“Becoming ACI MENA’s Editor-in-Chief, to carry the message of love to the Arabic world still submerged in conflicts and persecution, may be a heavy cross … but He has risen!” Hanna added.

Alejandro Bermudez, executive director of the ACI Group, of which ACI MENA is now a part, called the news agency’s launch “a major step forward for the ACI Group as well as for the larger EWTN News family.”

“We are honored to expand our news coverage of the ancient and heroic communities in this region, providing them local, Vatican and world news in Arabic,” Bermudez said. “ACI MENA will not be a simple translation of news in Arabic, but a local news agency written in Arabic for the Arabic-speaking world, which will also bring stories of local Christian communities to the rest of the world.” 

ACI MENA is the latest addition to the ACI Group, which includes ACI Prensa, the world’s largest Spanish-language Catholic news organization with headquarters in Lima, Peru; ACI Digital, the São Paulo, Brazil-based news organization, which serves the Portuguese-speaking world; ACI Stampa, the Italian-language news organization based in Rome; and ACI Africa, which covers news from the African continent in English, French, and Portuguese. 

ACI Group is part of the larger EWTN News, Inc. division, which also includes Catholic News Agency (CNA), the German-language news service CNA Deutsch, and several other Catholic news outlets, including the National Catholic Register, “EWTN News Nightly,” “EWTN News In Depth,” and several other television news programs.

In its 41st year, EWTN is the largest religious media network in the world. EWTN’s 11 global TV channels are broadcast in multiple languages 24 hours a day, seven days a week to over 390 million television households in more than 150 countries and territories.

EWTN platforms also include radio services transmitted through SIRIUS/XM, iHeart Radio, and over 500 domestic and international AM and FM radio affiliates; a worldwide shortwave radio service; one of the largest Catholic websites in the U.S.; and EWTN News; as well as EWTN Publishing, its book publishing division.

[…]

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News Briefs

What time is the consecration of Russia and Ukraine? Find out here

March 24, 2022 Catholic News Agency 3
An image of the Immaculate Heart of Mary at St. Peter’s Church, Vienna, Austria. | Pope Francis / Diana Ringo via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0 at) | Vatican Media

Denver Newsroom, Mar 24, 2022 / 15:25 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis will consecrate Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the evening of Friday, March 25, entrusting the nations to Mary’s help and protection amid the ongoing conflict there. The pope has asked everyone in the world to join him.

The consecration itself will take the form of a prayer that Pope Francis will recite during a penitential service in Rome. 

Here’s the prayer. Your diocese or parish is likely organizing a gathering to pray it together.

If you want to join the pope at the beginning of the penitential service, the service will start at 5 p.m. Rome time. EWTN will broadcast the service on cable and online. CNA will also be carrying the livestream on our Facebook page. 

If you want to join in praying with Pope Francis at the exact moment he is praying the prayer of consecration, that will likely happen closer to 6:30 p.m. Rome time, according to the pope.

When is 6:30 p.m. Rome time for you? Here’s a handy cheat sheet:

6:30 p.m. Rome

6:30 p.m. — West Africa Standard Time (Nigeria)

5:30 p.m. — GMT (London)

1:30 p.m. — Eastern Time (New York, Washington, Miami)

12:30 p.m. — Central Time (Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas)

11:30 a.m. — Mountain Time (Denver, Salt Lake City)

10:30 a.m. — Pacific Time (Los Angeles, Seattle)

9:30 a.m. — Alaska Daylight Time (Anchorage, Juneau)

7:30 a.m. — Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time (Honolulu)

04:30 a.m. (Saturday) — Sydney, Melbourne

02:30 a.m. (Saturday) — Japan

01:30 a.m. (Saturday) — Perth; China

8:30 p.m. — Moscow

7:30 p.m. — Helsinki, Kyiv

[…]

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News Briefs

Denver archdiocese: Supposed blood on St Michael statue ‘similar to red nail polish’

March 24, 2022 Catholic News Agency 0
A statue of St. Michael the Archangel with a liquid ‘similar to red nail polish’ on its head. / Alicia Martinez

Denver, Colo., Mar 24, 2022 / 15:00 pm (CNA).

After having a chemical analysis performed on swabs used to clean alleged blood from a local woman’s statue of St. Michael the Archangel, the Archdiocese of Denver has determined the red liquid was not blood.

Alicia Martinez, 57, of Broomfield, Colorado, a Denver suburb, said that her St. Michael statue began Feb. 23 to emit a dark liquid which appeared to be blood.

The Denver archdiocese said March 24 that “an initial visual inspection of the statue was conducted by a deacon from a parish in the area.”

Then, on March 12, three officials from the archdiocese’s chancery “visited to perform a more thorough investigation.” 

“Upon arriving at the house and entering the room where the statue was reportedly located, the archdiocesan team was told that someone had taken the St. Michael statue. There were no apparent signs of forced entry to the property.” 

After conducting an interview with Martinez about the alleged bleeding from the statue, she provided the team with several cotton swabs that she said had been used to clean the dark liquid which appeared to resemble blood from the statue. 

The archdiocese said that “A chemical analysis was conducted of the dried liquid on the cotton swabs using the Kastle-Meyer method for presumptive positive blood samples. The test definitively showed that the red liquid obtained from the statue was neither human nor animal blood. The appearance of the substance on the cotton swabs was similar to red nail polish.” 

In an interview conducted in Spanish with CNA earlier in March, Martinez had called the experience “inexplicable.”

After posting a video of the supposedly bleeding statue on Facebook, Martinez, who works at a grocery store, received several comments that she was only seeking money or fame, which led her to remove the video. She expressed multiple times that this was not her intention in sharing the video, but that it was “something real that happened to them [her and her roommates].” 

“What I was seeing was something real. It was something that doesn’t have an explanation,” she expressed. “This is not fraud. This is not to become famous. None of that. I know it’s something divine from God that doesn’t happen to everyone.”

The archdiocese concluded its March 24 statement saying that “As is always the case,” it “urges the faithful to exercise prudence in becoming involved with unapproved apparitions or alleged miracles.”

[…]