Free Republic

MOSCOW, April 16 (RIA Novosti) - The construction of an Orthodox church dedicated to All Saints and a Russian cultural center in Strasbourg will cost €6 million ($7.9 million), the Russian Orthodox Church’s envoy to the Council of Europe said Tuesday. “According to a preliminary assessment, some €6 million will be required, and construction may start this fall, presumably in early October, but only if the financing is received by that time,” said Hegumen Philip Ryabykh, who is also the rector of the All Saints parish in Strasbourg in eastern France. The parish of All Saints in Strasbourg was established...

For your Just Too Cool file… a reader alerted me to a post at Daniel Mitsui’s blog.This, if true, really is just too cool: SOLAR-POWERED NANOTECH-PURIFIED AIR in MEDIAEVAL CHURCHESInformation Week:The glaziers who created gold-painted stained glass windows for mediaeval churches in Europe… developed a solar-powered nanotech air-purification system.According to Zhu Huai Yong, an associate professor at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, the gold paint used in mediaeval-era stained glass windows purified the air when heated by sunlight.For centuries people appreciated only the beautiful works of art, and long life of the colors, but little did they realize that...

A Roman Catholic church is being built in Minsk, the first such construction project in the Belarusian capital city since the Bolshevik coup in 1917. The church is being constructed in the Serabranka neighborhood by the John the Baptist community with funds raised from its members and foreign donations. The city executive committee permitted the community to start the construction this past spring. The works began on June 15. The initial construction work involving the laying of the foundations and the connection of utility supplies is expected to be completed this year. The walls are to be built next year....

Mel Gibson made so much money from “The Passion of the Christ” that he’s now putting it where his mouth is, so to speak. He’s continuing to build a religious compound in Malibu for Catholics who reject Vatican II, and is implicitly endorsing his controversial father’s beliefs by helping him launch a similar church in Pennsylvania. Last year, according to federal tax filings, Gibson parked $5 million of his "Passion" profits in his tax-free private foundation — the same vehicle he’s used to pour millions into a 17-acre religious compound he’s building in Agoura Hills, Calif., at a “secret” rural...

The U.S. military also said Monday that gunmen killed an American Baptist minister from Rhode Island and wounded three other pastors in a weekend ambush south of the capital.

PROVIDENCE -- A South Kingstown missionary was shot to death in Iraq when gunmen opened fire on his vehicle in an attack that also wounded three others, according to a member of his church. John Kelley, 48, was traveling near Baghdad with several other pastors when a white sedan pulled up alongside them and opened fire, said Roland Vukic, of Charlestown, a member of Curtis Corner Church and a close friend of Kelley's. Vukic said he was told of the incident in a phone call Saturday from another pastor who was also in Iraq. U.S. paratroopers learned of Saturday's attack...

When Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew visited Cuba in late January, he followed a script written in the 1970s. We might call this the Fidel Castro scenario: Invite a prominent Church leader to take part in a public show of religious tolerance in order to mask the fundamentally anti-religious policies of the Cuban dictator’s regime. When the Patriarch consecrated an Orthodox Church that closed when Communism was imposed on Cuba, he barely whispered a word about Castro’s human right abuses. The first clue that something was amiss with the Patriarch’s Cuba trip was that the National Council of Churches (NCC) “happened” to...

For the first time in more than half a century, two Christian churches will be built in the capital city. At the same time, plans to renovate two ancient temples for Buddhist and Taoist religious rites are in the works. It is the first time churches are going up in the city since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949. One of them will be located in Chaoyang District, the other in Fengtai District in southwestern Beijing, said Hou Xiaoming, an official with the Beijing Religious Bureau. He said construction started in mid-December. Both churches are 1,500 square...

As Israelis and Palestinians take faltering steps toward ending Mideast violence, Christian groups in the United States have different stances on the U.S.-backed peace plan. The majority of churches - Roman Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant and some evangelical groups - generally welcome the three-step plan called the "road map," which envisions the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005. A vocal segment of evangelical Protestants, however, is lobbying the Bush administration to abandon the peace plan. They say it rewards terrorism and violates God's promise in Genesis to give the Jewish people the historic land of Israel. "Christian Zionists" also...