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Scientists: Jesus’ tomb faces major risk of collapse

March 31, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Jerusalem, Mar 31, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Having just undergone an extensive restoration, the site of Jesus’ tomb at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is at risk for significant structural failure if nothing is done to reinforce its foundations, scientists have said.

“When it fails, the failure will not be a slow process, but catastrophic,” Antonia Moropoulou, chief scientific supervisor with the National Technical University of Athens, told National Geographic in an exclusive interview.

A team of scientists with NTUA just recently completed a year-long restoration of the site believed to be the tomb of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem. National Geographic has been extensively covering the restoration process.  

During the restoration process, the team of scientists determined that The Edicule (Latin for “little house”), a small shrine within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that encloses Jesus’ tomb, was resting on an unstable foundation of tunnels, channels, rubble and crumbling foundation mortar.  

According to the Gospels, the body of Christ was laid in a new tomb hewn out of rock, in which no one had ever been buried. The Gospel of Mark details that the women who went to the tomb to anoint Christ’s body instead found that he had risen.

Veneration of Christ’s burial place dates back to St. Helena in the fourth century, who discovered and identified the tomb. St. Helena’s son, Emperor Constantine, built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 326 and enshrined the tomb.

The shelf on which Christ’s body was laid is the central point of veneration, which has been encapsulated by a 3-by-5 foot marble structure – the Edicule – since at least 1555.

Part of the reason for the unstable foundation is because the site was built on the remains of a limestone quarry that was once used to house tombs of upper class Jews.

Throughout the early history of the Christian church, various shrines surrounding the tomb of Jesus were built and subsequently destroyed, depending on who was in power.

The Edicule and the surrounding rotunda of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, complete with massive 22-ton pillars, rests on this unstable foundation of rubble and tunnels today. The site sees nearly 4 million visitors a year.  

While the structural integrity of the site has been a concern for almost 100 years, National Geographic reports, disputes between the three main Christian groups that control the site – the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Patriarchates of Jerusalem and the Roman Catholic Franciscan Custos of the Holy Land – and a lack of funds prevented much restoration progress from being made.

Now, scientists are working with Church authorities to determine the best plan for restoration work on the foundation, which is estimated to cost 6 million euro and would take about 10 months.
 
Archeologists are also hoping to take advantage of the process, which would expose important archeological sites for the first time in centuries.

Scientists on the restoration team with NTUA are compiling the latest data into a report, which will be given to Church authorities of the three main Christian groups, who must reach an agreement before the process moves forward.

“This work is a collective work,” Moropoulou said. “It doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to all humanity.”

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Priest visits church destroyed by ISIS: This is from the devil

March 31, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Mosul, Iraq, Mar 31, 2017 / 12:53 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The desolation of a burned Iraqi church left Argentine-born missionary Father Luis Montes with the firm conviction that Satan is at the root of the attacks, and Christians must pray for the conversion of ISIS.

“The one who is behind everything is the devil, behind ISIS and the rest of the jihadist groups, and behind the people who support them, some by a similar fanaticism and others for various interests,” the priest said upon visiting the heavily damaged Church of Saint George in Bartella, recently freed from the Islamic State group.

Fr. Montes said that these forces are in reality attacking Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the human race. “But since they cannot harm him, they attack his churches, his faithful, in memory of him,” he said.

“It really shakes you up to see a sacred place burned, vandalized, desecrated,” he said on his Facebook page March 24. “You’re left speechless seeing what you already knew from photos and testimonies. It makes your blood run cold.”

“To see the floors, the walls, the ceilings full of soot, the pews thrown any which way, statues broken, scattered, trampled, the sacred books reduced to ashes, you perceive in a very powerful way the hatred that caused this, the hatred that can be summed up in a sentence: the rejection of Christ and his Cross.”

He stressed that “the same hatred that attacks the temples of Christ, attacks the living temples which are the Christians.”

Fr. Montes acknowledged that the Islamic State group “attacks everyone who does not think like they do,” but he said Christians are persecuted because Christ was the first one persecuted.

Seeing a destroyed church brings sadness, pain, and anger, but also “a holy pride, because they are persecuting us for belonging to Christ,” the priest reflected. “Jesus told us that when this happens, let us rejoice, because our reward will be great in Heaven.”

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The priest’s March 23 visit to Bartella and Qaraqosh came at the invitation of Archbishop Alberto Ortega, apostolic nuncio to Iraq and Jordan. The traditionally Christian towns were seized by the Islamic State group two years ago and only recently freed by Iraqi military troops.

Father Montes is a missionary of the Institute of the Incarnate Word. He has been on mission in Iraq for more than five years. Those who doubt that Christians are persecuted should visit these towns, he said.

Despite the great pain left in the wake of ISIS, the priest said he also found grace.

“It was a deep joy which led me to pick up some keepsakes of that place: a stone, a cover of a burned missal, a piece of some destroyed statue, all symbols of the grace that God grants us for being persecuted for his Son.”

“So much destruction must move us to pray for the persecutors,” Fr. Montes said, calling them “the foolish followers of the greatest loser in history.”

“The devil makes noise and instills fear but he is the great failure,” he explained. “When he succeeded in killing the Son of God, he lost the power he had, and now, when evil seems to be more victorious, in reality it is when it most defeats itself, because God ordains everything for the good of his chosen ones.”

The priest urged the faithful “to pray for those who follow the devil, so they may convert and live, because God is capable of calling them to Himself and awaits our prayers to give us the glory of being partakers in his victory.”

 

 

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We’re all responsible for seminarians, African bishop says

March 24, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Cape Coast, Ghana, Mar 23, 2017 / 08:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Priestly formation isn’t a just a job for the rector – it’s a responsibility shared between the entire Christian community and seminarians themselves, said a Ghanaian bishop.

“It is the duty and the primary responsibility of parents to form or educate seminarians, while the seminarian himself has the onerous responsibility to be involved and committed to his own formation if he wants to become truly what God the Father has willed,” Archbishop Charles Palmer-Buckle of Accra said.

The archbishop delivered the keynote address the week of March 12 at gathering themed “Sixty Years of Priestly Formation for the Church in Ghana and the Universal Church – A Shared Responsibility.” The address was a part of the activities at St. Peter’s Catholic Seminary in the Cape Coast to mark the 60th anniversary of Ghana’s independence as a nation.

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle acknowledges that “the challenges are not to be underrated” but stressed it is the entire Christian community which must contribute. He said the challenges for a complete and concrete formation are to be kept in sight of “parents, guardians and society,” for the good of the “subject, the child or the student…and [the] Church as a whole.”

He said that education of the faith begins in the home with families and children, but then continues onto the state, the church, and religious leadership.

Pope Francis has also expressed similar sentiments in a 2015 homily. He said the family is the “center of pastoral work,” and a “handing on of the faith” begins in the home and church.

The Pope also said that a priest “always remains of the people and the culture that have produced him; our roots help us to remember who we are and to where Christ has called us. We priests do not fall from above but are instead called by God, who takes us ‘from among men,’ to ‘ordain us for men.’”

In his address last week, Archbishop Palmer-Buckle said that the Holy Spirit is bestowed on everyone in the church, and it is therefore the responsibility of the entire church to nature vocations.

“As a shared responsibility, it begins with praying to the Lord of the harvest to send laborers into his vineyard. Then it follows with calling people and nurturing them to follow Christ in the priesthood and religious life.”

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South Sudan bishop says nation’s prayers must provoke change

March 16, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Juba, South Sudan, Mar 16, 2017 / 03:34 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid war, displacement and hunger, South Sudan’s day of prayer must lead to true repentance, a leading Catholic bishop has said.

“Our call to prayer must be sincere and honest!” Bishop Barani Eduardo Hiiboro of Tombura-Yambio emphasized. “For this prayer to become historical and meaningful for us today we must repent and sin no more!”

Bishop Hiiboro, president of the Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference, spoke in Yamibo on the March 10 day of prayer.

The country has been embroiled in civil war since December 2013, when South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy, Riek Machar, of attempting a coup. The war has been fought between their supporters, largely along ethnic lines, and peace agreements have been short-lived.

The conflict has created 2.5 million refugees. At present an estimated 4.5 million people face severe food insecurity, a number expected to rise one million by July.

President Kiir had called for the day of prayer. A three-day national dialogue on the country’s future began March 15.

Bishop Hiiboro said the whole country will be watching the president closely to see whether his attitude will trend towards peace.

The country’s people should also watch themselves, the bishop said: “All of us who have prayed today will also be watched whether we renounce our sinfulness of hate, violence, tribal difference, for love of South Sudan and peace.”

Bishop Hiiboro said South Sudan must commit itself to God every year as a way to unite the country.

“Continual prayers help us in stepping forward to embrace the su ffering of our country, through unified, concrete action animated by the love of Christ, to nurture peace and build bridges of communication and mutual aid in our own communities throughout South Sudan,” he said.

He encouraged efforts to explore other ways to nurture open dialogue on issues of ethnic relations, justice, forgiveness, poverty, cultural power, mental health, economic opportunity and a “pervasive culture of violence.”

“The suffering is not somewhere else, or someone else’s. It is our own, in our very homes,” the bishop said.

After the day of prayer, people should walk like penitent sinners. They should stop their hateful and vengeful attitudes and free prisoners. They should reach out to refugees and the South Sudan diaspora in other countries and create a ground for all South Sudanese to dialogue, he said.

The president’s call for a day of prayer had drawn some criticism.

Bishop Santo Loku Pio Doggale, Auxiliary Bishop of the national capital Juba, characterized it as “a political prayer” and “a mockery.”

“It is a joke to hear the president of the country calling prayers while at the moment, the soldiers are hunting people across South Sudan,” he told Voice of America, according to the Sudan Tribune.

He charged that the government army has displaced many people from their ancestral homes. The bishop said that President Kiir, who is Catholic, does not even go to church anymore.

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Nigeria’s bishops call on government to defend human rights

March 16, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Abuja, Nigeria, Mar 16, 2017 / 12:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- At a recent meeting, the Catholic Bishops of Nigeria gave a bleak summary of the state of their country, lamenting humanitarian crises including violence at the hands of Boko Haram and other extremist groups, poverty, government corruption, and a lack of respect for human rights or dignity.

“Since the end of Nigeria’s tragic civil war, at no other time in the history of our dear country has the issue of our common citizenship been subjected to more strain,” the bishops said in a statement at the conclusion of their plenary assembly, held in Abuja March 4-10.

“We have found the outright disdain for the sanctity of human life totally at variance with both our cultural traditional norms and our religious sensibilities. Life has never looked so cheap,” they said.

While Nigeria’s civil war ended in 1970, the country has recently undergone a period of extreme violence and instability, with the rise of Boko Haram and other Islamist terrorist groups.

Since 2009, changing government relations and radicalization within Boko Haram have resulted in a dramatic increase in violent attacks against civilian targets, including the 2014 abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok. In 2015, the Global Terrorism Index named Boko Haram the world’s deadliest terrorist organization, greater than the Islamic State.

A 2016 report from the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative said Nigeria was a ticking timebomb of violence and ethnic tensions that could tear the country apart.

The country’s bishops decried the ethnic divides that are tearing the country apart, and warned about the dangers of raising a generation of young people who are continually witnessing violence.

“…more and more of our young children are losing their innocence as they watch their parents being randomly slaughtered and their properties vandalised,” the bishops said.

They also called on the government to work to improve the economy, and lamented that many recent graduates are unable to find jobs, making them more likely to end up on the streets or to be recruited or trafficked by extremist groups.

“Today, we are losing our children to the streets, to gangs and drugs. As long as these young people roam the streets with so much despondency, so long will they remain exposed and perhaps recruited to join such evil groups like kidnappers, drug and human trafficking gangs or Boko Haram. Our nation must reverse this ugly trend in our society,” they said.

While the recent violence erupted under Boko Haram, the bishops also noted the 2015 Zaria massacre, during which the Nigerian army killed hundreds of Shia Muslims, as well as the killings in Southern Kaduna and the victims of the Fulani herdsmen, who since September 2016 have burned 53 villages, murdered more than 800 people, and destroyed more than 1,400 houses and 16 churches.

Christians and moderate Muslims living in the northern part of the country have been especially vulnerable to terrorist attacks at the hands of Islamist extremists.

The bishops thanked the current government administration for their efforts in stopping the terrorism and for helping the victims, including recovering some of the Chibook girls, but they also urged the government to speed up the resettlement process for those fleeing the violence.

They also called on the government to “put into effect its unfulfilled commitments such as ending poverty, feeding the nation, and providing accessible education,” and to uphold and reinforce the rights of religious freedom for everyone in the country.

In conclusion, the Nigerian bishops offered their prayers for President Muhammadu Buhari, who recently was on an extended sick leave, raising political and economic tensions in the country. They also offered their prayers that Nigeria would put its vast resources at the service of all of its people.

“The equitable distribution of our resources for the common good must be the definite goal of those who hold this trust. This will help to restore our dignity as human beings and our integrity as a nation and our loyalty as citizens. God bless Nigeria.”

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Critics of church demolitions in Sudan pressured to keep silent

March 10, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Khartoum, Sudan, Mar 10, 2017 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Christians who are criticizing government action against churches are facing pressure from Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services.

“They told me not to talk about the demolition of churches or the two church leaders who are in jail,” Rev. Mubarak Hamad, chairman of Sudan’s Council of Churches, told Radio Tamazuj, a broadcaster in Sudan and South Sudan.

The Sudanese government plans to demolish 25 church buildings in and near the capital of Khartoum, which it says were built on illegal lands which are zoned for other uses. The targeted churches include both Catholic and Protestant buildings.

The order to demolish the churches was made in June 2016. Government officials notified several congregations in September to vacate their property.

Christian officials have challenged the claims, saying the properties were legally obtained and have legal titles.

“This is not an isolated act but should be taken with wider perspective,” Yahia Abdelrahim Nalu, moderator of the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church’s Sudan Evangelical Synod, told Morning Star News last month.

One Christian critic of the demolitions plan, Milad Musa, is allegedly facing retaliation. The security services have required him to report to their offices from 6 a.m. to midnight since Feb. 15. Sometimes he has food in his custody, sometimes he does not.

He is a member of the Sudanese Church of Christ.

Rev. Hamad faced similar requirements to report to the custody of the security services from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily after he held a press conference Feb. 11 calling on the government to reconsider  the demolitions. He noted at the press conference that mosques in the same area were not ordered to be demolished.

Security services lifted that requirement Feb. 26, but then ordered him not to speak publicly about the persecution of Christians and the demolition of church buildings unless he had authorization from security forces.

Since 2012 Sudan has bulldozed church buildings and harrassed and expelled foreign Christians, according to Morning Star News. It was announced in April 2013 that no licenses would be granted to build new churches.

Two Christian leaders in Sudan have been sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of espionage.

At least 90 percent of Sudan’s population is Muslim, and sharia is the source of the nation’s legislation. Apostasy from Islam is punishable by the death penalty.

Since 1999, the U.S. state department has listed Sudan as a country of particular concern due to religious freedom violations.

International Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need noted in its 2016 Religious Freedom Report that Sudan’s constitution was amended to “widen and increase” the power of the National Intelligence and Security Services, which has impacted “human resources issues and the prosecution of individuals, media outlets and organisations for alleged breaches of the law.”

Sudan scored a 12 out of 100 in Transparency International’s 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index, ranking ahead of only Afghanistan, North Korea, and Somalia.

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Bishop rejects South Sudan president’s day of prayer as a political move

March 8, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Juba, South Sudan, Mar 8, 2017 / 12:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The call by South Sudan’s president for a national day of prayer was met with derision by one of the country’s bishops, who called it a “political prayer” and a mockery.

President Salva Kiir addressed South Sudan via state-owned media last week to announce a day of prayer on March 10. The country has been embroiled in civil war since December 2013, when Kiir accused his former deputy, Riek Machar, of attempting a coup. The war has been fought between their supporters, largely along ethnic lines, and peace agreements have been short-lived.

“I have been praying for South Sudan every day. This morning, I prayed for South Sudan. That prayer called by Salva Kiir; I will never and never understand. Unless they carry me as a corpse but I will never attend that prayer. It is a political prayer. It is a mockery,” Bishop Santo Loku Pio Doggale, Auxiliary Bishop of Juba, told Voice of America, according to the Sudan Tribune.

“Why should I go [to] pray where there is no holiness, where there is no forgiveness? It is a joke to hear the president of the country calling prayers while at the moment, the soldiers are hunting people across South Sudan.”

He cited the government’s army’s displacement of numerous people from their homes. “People are being thrown away from their ancestral land. There have been a lot of robbery of the resources of the people.”

Bishop Doggale also charged that Kiir, who is Catholic, “does not even come to church these days.”

Kiir’s proposed national day of prayer precedes the March 15 launch of a three-day national dialogue.

“Our time … is now ripe to turn to God and ask him for forgiveness and blessings. We have not been that perfect and we need to submit ourselves to the Almighty through prayers,” Kiir said. “It should be the day we all pray to God and ask Him for forgiveness so that we start a new chapter in our relations as citizens of this nation.”

The national dialogue is being directed by Kiir. One of his spokesmen has said that Machar, the former vice-president, may attend once he has denounced violence. Kiir’s direction of the dialogue has been criticized, given his role in the country’s civil war.

In January 2016, Bishop Doggale told CNA that the government of South Sudan, as well as that of Sudan, puts political agendas over its people’s interests.

“We have crossroads of displaced people in both countries suffering from the political elite who don’t take their people in heart,” he said.

The bishops of South Sudan recently called for dialogue between the country’s warring factions, and charged that the forces of both sides are targeting civilians.

“Those who have the ability to make changes for the good of our people have not taken heed of our previous pastoral messages,” the said in their Feb. 23 message. “We need to see action, not just dialogue for the sake of dialogue.”

The bishops said the war has “no moral justification whatsoever,” and expressed concern that some government officials seem to be suspicious of the Church.

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