Showing posts with label Church Current Events. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Church Current Events. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

ISIS Bombs Assyrian, Armenian Churches in Syria

The St. Odisho Assyrian Church in Tel Tal, Syria, was bombed by ISIS yesterday.
The St. Odisho Assyrian Church in Tel Tal, Syria, was bombed by ISIS yesterday.

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

(AINA) -- According to reports from Syria and also the Turkish press, ISIS has bombed two churches in Syria, the St. Odisho Assyrian Church in Tel Tal and the St. Rita Tilel Armenian Church in Aleppo. The churches were bombed yesterday.

Located on the Khabur river in the Hasaka province in Syria, Tel Tal is one of the 35 Assyrian villages that was attacked by ISIS on February 23. ISIS captured nearly 300 Assyrians in those attacks and subsequently released 23, all from the village of Tel Goran. The remaining Assyrians are still being held captive.


Read more by clicking below:
ISIS Bombs Assyrian, Armenian Churches in Syria



Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Human Rights Leaders Plead With Obama to Stop 'Nazi' Campaign Against Christians

A woman mourns with the framed picture of a man said to be among the 30 Ethiopian victims killed by members of the militant Islamic State in Libya, in the capital Addis Ababa, April 21, 2015. Ethiopia said on Monday that the 30 Christians shown being shot and beheaded in Libya on a video purportedly made by Islamic State were its citizens (REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri).


The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

WASHINGTON -- After viewing the video that was released April 19, showing the murder of two groups of Ethiopian Christians by Islamic State terrorists, Jewish and Christian human rights groups have issued a joint statement calling on President Obama to intervene with force to stop the ongoing extermination of Christians in the Middle East.
In a gruesome repeat of the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians in February, masked IS militants marched 15 Ethiopian Christians along Libya’s shore of the Mediterranean Sea and beheaded them. Another group of 15 was shot in another murderous act in an area of Libyan shrub land.

Open Doors USA, a global advocacy group for the persecuted, was joined by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization, in condemning the killings and calling for the United States to intervene.

In a joint statement, the groups claimed to have alerted Western governments for months “that a religious genocide of Christians was taking place” with little response, and took particular aim at President Obama for his lack of action.

While we welcome the White House acknowledgment that these victims were targeted because of their faith, much more needs to be done,” wrote David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, along with colleague Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, who serves with him as director of interfaith issues.

They chided the president to fully acknowledge the “religious extremism” and “theologically fueled hatred” that is at the heart of Islamic State terrorism. Likewise, they called on him to lead NATO to “forge an action plan” to protect Christians in the Middle East.

We must not stand idly by and watch as thousands of Christians are murdered for their faith,” they said.

Calling the Islamic persecution of Christians a type of “Nazi ideology” that unabated “will continue to infect the hearts and minds of the ever-growing number of youth around the world,” they said, “The time to act is now.”


Read more by clicking below:
Human Rights Leaders Plead With Obama to Stop 'Nazi' Campaign Against Christians



Thursday, January 08, 2015

Former Assyrian Church Leader and Two Christian Converts Arrested in Iran

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

Iranian security agents arrested an Assyrian pastor and two Christian converts who were his guests at his Tehran residence on December 26, 2014, according to Mansour Borji, Spokesperson for the Alliance of Iranian Churches.

Borji told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that the full reasons for the arrest of Pastor Victor Beth Tarmez, a former leader of the Tehran Pentecostal Assyrian Church, and his guests remain unknown, but that at the time of the raid on his home, agents stated that they were arresting the individuals because they "participated in an illegal gathering." The "illegal gathering" was a Christmas party Tarmez was holding at his home and his guests were Zoroastrian, Muslim, and Christian citizens.

"There was a Christmas party at Pastor Victor's home. He and his wife and son and 14 guests were there. When agents entered the home, first they searched all the personal belongings of the guests, then they videotaped their faces, and then they searched the premises. Eventually, they arrested Pastor Tarmez along with two Christian converts and confiscated some property from the home," Borji told the Campaign.

"During a short phone call to his family on December 29, Pastor Victor informed them that he is held at Evin Prison. We have no information about the status of the two Christian converts arrested on the same day. All we know is that they have not been released yet," added Mansour Borji.


Read more by clicking below:
Former Assyrian Church Leader and Two Christian Converts Arrested in Iran


Saturday, August 09, 2014

ISIS Persecution of Iraqi Christians Has Become Genocide, Say Religious Leaders


The following excerpts are from Aina.org:

Isis's persecution of Iraqi Christians, which has already forced tens of thousands of men, women and children to flee for their lives, is fast becoming a genocide, religious leaders have warned.

Archbishop Athanasius Toma Dawod of the Syriac Orthodox church said that Isis's capture of Qaraqosh, Iraq's largest Christian city, had marked a turning point for Christians in the country.

"Now we consider it genocide -- ethnic cleansing," he said. "They are killing our people in the name of Allah and telling people that anyone who kills a Christian will go straight to heaven: that is their message. They have burned churches; they have burned very old books. They have damaged our crosses and statues of the Virgin Mary. They are occupying our churches and converting them into mosques."

The archbishop, who leads the Syriac Orthodox church in the UK, urged the UK government to open the country's doors to those fleeing the violence. "We are dying, 100%," he said. "The British government needs to help people and to give them asylum. If they stay here, they will be killed."

His pleas were echoed by Patriarch Louis Sako, the Iraq-based leader of the Chaldean Catholic church, who said that about 100,000 Christians had abandoned their villages in the Nineveh plains earlier this week after Isis launched mortar attacks. He asked the EU and the UN to help them before it was too late.

Read more by clicking below:



Thursday, July 31, 2014

LIBYA - PHILIPPINES Tripoli priest calls for the repatriation of Filipino workers whose lives are risk - Asia News



The following excerpts are from AsiaNews.it:

Tripoli (AsiaNews/CBCP) - The Catholic Church in Libya "is doing everything possible" to help Filipino workers return home safe and sound, said Fr Amado Baranquel, parish priest at Tripoli's Mary Immaculate Church. Hence, the Filipino government should "rescue them via the sea" since armed clashes between Libyan government forces and the rebel groups have made land travel "too unsafe".

About 13,000 Filipinos live in Libya. Although they are welcome in the country, they have also been affected by the Islamist advance. A 50-year-old man who worked for a construction company was kidnapped and beheaded in Benghazi on 23 July because he was not Muslim.

"Violence and rapes against foreigners are happening every day," Fr Baranquel explained.In fact, two orders of nuns have repatriated their members to Italy, he said. "It is too risky for them to stay here."


Read more by clicking below:
LIBYA - PHILIPPINES Tripoli priest calls for the repatriation of Filipino workers whose lives are risk - Asia News



Christian Groups to Rally for Protection in Iraq


The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

Across the ancient cities and villages of Iraq, an "N" word also is used out of hate.

Members of the extremist group known as ISIS spray paint the letter "N" in blazing red on the homes of those they deem different. Scrawled in Arabic and pronounced "noon," the N stands for Nazarene, or follower of Christ, and to an outsider, it may look like a happy face.

But ISIS uses it as a mark of death. It warns Christian families who live in those homes to convert to Islam, pay a hefty tax, or prepare to die.

"There is a Christian genocide happening in Northern Iraq and no one is doing anything about it" said Delilah George, a 31-year-old Assyrian woman and Valley Village resident. "My people are experiencing unspeakable horror and grief at the hands of these radicals."

Since the takeover in June of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or ISIS has targeted the Christian population, whose faith has been present for almost 2,000 years. In the last two weeks, Assyrians were forced to leave their ancestral homeland under the threat of death. Many have been beaten, robbed and brutalized, or killed along the way as they search for a safe haven.

The sadness, frustration with the lack of public awareness and even anger has prompted George and countless Assyrians to hold a rally Saturday at the Federal Building in Los Angeles. Dubbed "Demand for Action," the Los Angeles event is one of nearly 40 worldwide to be held also on Saturday across the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Australia.


Read more by clicking below:
Christian Groups to Rally for Protection in Iraq



Monday, July 28, 2014

Five Killed in Bombing of Catholic Church in Nigeria



The following excerpts are from ChristianPost.com:

At least five people were killed and eight others injured in a bomb attack on a Catholic church in Nigeria's northern city of Kano on Sunday. The bombing was blamed on the Islamist terror group Boko Haram.

The Saint Charles Catholic church, which is situated in Kano's Sabon Gari (foreign quarter) area, a mainly Christian area, was attacked shortly after the end of Sunday mass, police spokesman Frank Mba told Agence France Presse.

"We suspect an IED (improvised explosive device) that was thrown from across the road," the spokesman said.

In a separate incident in Kano city on Sunday, police prevented a woman from carrying out an attack outside a university, following which she blew herself up. Five police officials were injured while isolating her.

Following the two incidents on Sunday, Kano's emir cancelled the celebration of the Eid festival, which marks the end of the Muslim month of Ramadan.


Read more by clicking below:
Five Killed in Bombing of Catholic Church in Nigeria


Saturday, July 26, 2014

PHILIPPINES - LIBYA Filipino priest warns that the lives of 13,000 Filipinos in Libya are in danger - Asia News



The following excerpts are from AsiaNews.it:

Manila (AsiaNews/CBCP) - As Libya's political crisis plunges the country into ever greater chaos, a Filipino priest in Tripoli urges his government to ensure the safety of some 13,000 Filipinos trapped in the country.

Fr Amado Baranquel, pastor of the Church of Mary Immaculate in the Libyan capital, issued his appeal after radical Islamists killed a Filipino in Benghazi "for not being a Muslim."

The victim was a 50-year-old construction worker who was abducted and killed on Wednesday.

This has caused panic among Filipinos in Libya who are unable to leave because ports and airports have been destroyed.

Read more by clicking below:
PHILIPPINES - LIBYA Filipino priest warns that the lives of 13,000 Filipinos in Libya are in danger - Asia News


Monday, July 14, 2014

Christians Disappearing From Iraq, Bishops Lament

Chaldean Archbishops of Erbil and Kirkuk, Bashar Warda and Yousif Mirkis (photo: Aid to the Church in Need).

The following excerpts are from AINA.org:

Two Iraqi archbishops are seeking "faith and hope" in Iraq, while bewailing the continuing exodus of Christians from the country amid continued violence.
Archbishop Yousif Mirkis heads the Chaldean Archdiocese of Kirkuk, in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.

He said that he "quite definitely" fears the end of Christianity in Iraq.

"We are in the process of disappearing, just as the Christians in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and North Africa have disappeared. And even in Lebanon they now constitute only a minority," he told the international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need July 8.

Archbishop Mirkis said he is not resigned to defeat, but "trying to be realistic."

"There is still the hope that faith brings," he said. While he himself will not leave Iraq, he said he understands why young Christians are leaving in the wake of so many violent deaths.

"In the past ten years we have lost a bishop and six priests. In addition there are about a thousand of the faithful who have died in attacks."

"Not everybody shares the faith and the hope."

The Christian population in Iraq has plummeted to 400,000, down from about 1.5 million before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.


Read more by clicking below:
Christians Disappearing From Iraq, Bishops Lament



Thursday, May 15, 2014

Nicaragua’s bishops to meet with Ortega, declare days of prayer : News Headlines - Catholic Culture


The following excerpts are from CWN:

  • On May 21, Nicaragua’s bishops, along with the apostolic nuncio, will meet with President Daniel Ortega, whom a bishop recently said has undertaken a “devious persecution” of the Church.
  • Ortega, a leader of the Marxist Sandinistas who overthrew the authoritarian regime of Gen. Anastasio Somoza Debayle, ruled Nicaragua from the 1979 Sandinista takeover until his loss in the 1990 presidential election. Ortega won the presidential elections of 2006 and 2011.

Read more by clicking below:
Nicaragua’s bishops to meet with Ortega, declare days of prayer : News Headlines - Catholic Culture



Tuesday, May 06, 2014

Christians 'Crucified Again' for Refusing Islam


The following excerpts are from AINA:

  • To the awe of its readership, a recent Daily Mail article reports that the “jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant [ISIL],” which is currently entrenched in Raqqa, Syria, “publicly crucified two Syrian rebels in northeastern Syria in revenge for a grenade attack on members of their group.”
  • While the Daily Mail is to be commended for exposing these barbaric acts—along with posting photos of the crucified—it nonetheless minimized their significance, in two important ways: 1) by repeatedly saying things like “even al-Qaeda is distancing itself from ISIL,” and so implying that the act of crucifixion is some wild aberration that even the poster-child of jihadi terror, al-Qaeda, wants nothing to do with it; and 2) ignoring the much “sexier” story that Christians in Syria are also being crucified simply for refusing to embrace Islam (as opposed to the rather mundane but politically more correct story of Islamic jihadis crucifying each other in the context of vendetta killings).
  • Consider the atrocities earlier committed in Ma'loula, Syria, an ancient Christian village where the inhabitants still spoke Aramaic, the language of Christ.
  • According to recent Arabic news media, "a Syrian nun testified to the Vatican news agency that some Christians in Ma'loula were crucified for refusing to convert to Islam or pay jizya" (tribute subjugated Christians are required to pay to their Islamic conquerors in order to exist as Christians, per Koran 9:29).
  • Incidentally, they were crucified by the al-Qaeda linked Nasra Front (so much for Daily Mail's portrayal of al-Qaeda "distancing" itself from the apparently "extra-extremist" ISIL for crucifying its victims).

Read more by clicking below:
Christians 'Crucified Again' for Refusing Islam



Monday, May 05, 2014

Teacher tells student he can't read the Bible in classroom | Fox News


The following excerpts are from Fox News:

  • A Florida school teacher humiliated a 12-year-old boy in front of an entire class after she caught him reading the Bible during free reading time.
  • The teacher, at Park Lakes Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale, ordered Giovanni Rubeo to pick up the telephone on her desk and call his parents. 
  • As the other students watched, the teacher left a terse message on the family’s answering machine here.
  • “I noticed that he has a book – a religious book – in the classroom,” she said on the recording. “He’s not permitted to read those books in my classroom.”

Read more by clicking below:
Teacher tells student he can't read the Bible in classroom | Fox News



Thursday, May 01, 2014

Continued violence against Christians in Orissa : News Headlines - Catholic Culture

The following excerpts are from Catholic World News:

  • Six years after an anti-Christian pogrom in the eastern Indian state of Orissa left several dozen dead and drove 50,000 from their homes, Hindu radicals destroyed a Catholic survivor’s rebuilt home, according to the India Christian Activist Network.
  • The state is now officially known as Odisha.

Read more by clicking below:
Continued violence against Christians in Orissa : News Headlines - Catholic Culture



Egypt: 2 Christians dead in sectarian clashes : News Headlines - Catholic Culture

The following excerpts are from Catholic World News:

  • Sectarian clashes between Muslims and Chrstians have broken out in towns around Assiut, a city of 400,000 in central Egypt.
  • A Muslim driver destroyed the front of a store owned by a Coptic Christian in Paisari, according to the Egyptian news site Copts United. During a reconciliation meeting between the Christian and Muslim communities, violence broke out, leaving 10 injured.

Read more by clicking below:
Egypt: 2 Christians dead in sectarian clashes : News Headlines - Catholic Culture

Chaldean patriarch rips Western actions in Iraq: ‘we are a ruined church’ : News Headlines - Catholic Culture

The following excerpts are from Catholic World News:
  • Eleven years after the US invasion of Iraq, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church declared that “we are a ruined church” and said that “1,400 years of Islam could not uproot us from our land and our churches, while the policies of the West [have] scattered us and distributed us all around the world.”
  • “Democracy and change come through upbringing and education rather than through conflict,” said Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako, who has governed the Eastern Catholic church since February 2013. “Intervention by the West in the region did not solve the problems … but on the contrary, produced more chaos and conflict.”
  • Referring to the regime of Saddam Hussein, he said that “in the Church of the Ascension, Al-Mashtal, for example, there were about 5,000 families and over 240 students preparing for their First Holy Communion before the regime’s fall.” On “25 April 2014, I celebrated in this church the Holy Mass for First Holy Communion of 13 students only.”

Read more by clicking below:



Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Gunmen attack Kenyan church, kill 6 : News Headlines - Catholic Culture

The following excerpts are from Catholic Culture's Catholic World News:

  • Gunmen entered a Protestant church in Likoni, a municipality in southeastern Kenya, and killed six worshippers.
  • Some news agencies reported that the Somali Islamist terrorist organization Al-Shabaab is suspected in the attack. The local Catholic bishop offered his own hypothesis.

Read more by clicking below:
Gunmen attack Kenyan church, kill 6 : News Headlines - Catholic Culture


Indonesian court bows to Islamic militants, revokes permit for Catholic church : News Headlines - Catholic Culture

The following excerpts are from Catholic Culture's Catholic World News:


  • In the West Java region of Indonesia, Islamic militants have pressured a court to revoke the building permit for a Catholic church, the AsiaNews service reports.

Read more by clicking below:
Indonesian court bows to Islamic militants, revokes permit for Catholic church : News Headlines - Catholic Culture


Saturday, March 15, 2014

More than thirty North Koreans sentenced to death for their faith


The following excerpts are from Live Action News:

  • If there was a question about whether Kim Jong-Un had any intention of heeding the U.N. Report on the rampant human rights abuses in North Korea, or complying with any of its demands, none should remain following the recent revelation by the South Korean press that the brutal dictator is preparing to execute approximately 33 Christians for allegedly attempting to overthrow the North Korean government.
  • The condemned have received this sentence, in reality, for nothing more than having come into contact with South Korean missionary Kim Jung-wook and receiving money to fund underground Christian churches.....

Read more by clicking below:
More than thirty North Koreans sentenced to death for their faith


Tuesday, February 11, 2014

‘Faithful dissent’? Catholic school board sponsors lecture on how to oppose Church moral teachings | LifeSiteNews.com

The following excerpts are from LifeSiteNews.com:
  • An Ontario Catholic school board sponsored a lecture last week focused on how Catholic schools can “value … faithful dissent” as a way of opposing Catholic teaching on “ordination, homosexuality, and contraception.”
  • The Waterloo Catholic District School Board sponsored Graham McDonough, PhD, to speak at St. Jerome’s University (SJU) Friday night as part of the University’s lecture series on “Catholic Experience.”
  • “Catholic schools often find themselves dealing with disagreements with Church teaching on topics such as ordination, homosexuality, and contraception as well as with complaints that schools are not properly teaching doctrine,” reads a description of the lecture, titled “Faithful Disagreement: an opportunity for rediscovery in Catholic education.”
  • "This lecture proposes that Catholic schools can do more to include and nurture internal disagreement as a powerful opportunity to embrace intellectual diversity, learn the value of faithful dissent and enable greater participation in the Church and the world.”
  • Jack Fonseca of Campaign Life Catholics called it “diabolical” to have a Catholic school board sponsor a lecture on dissent.
  • “This is all a charade,” he said. “The description of the lecture seems to call for outright revolt against teachings that constitute unchangeable Catholic doctrine.”

Read more by clicking below:

Thursday, January 23, 2014

4,000 incidents of anti-Christian violence in India last year : News Headlines - Catholic Culture


The following excerpts are from Catholic World News Headlines:

  • More than 4,000 cases of anti-Christian violence occurred in India last year, according to a report received by the Fides news agency.
  • The “report on persecution in 2013,” prepared cooperatively by several Christian groups in India, documented 7 murders along with hundreds of beatings, attacks on churches, and other forms of abuse. 

Read more by clicking below:
4,000 incidents of anti-Christian violence in India last year : News Headlines - Catholic Culture