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The Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Iraq, who lost his diocese to the Islamic State last year and is now in exile in Erbil (Iraqi Kurdistan), warned that the suffering in Iraq was only a prelude of what European and Western Christians will "suffer in the near future," and stressed that the West is endangering itself by welcoming "an ever-growing number of Muslims." He also emphasized that while the West says "all men are equal," Islam "does not say that all men are equal," and "their values" are not our values. "Our sufferings today are the prelude of those that you,...

The trials and tribulations of the Crawley family have enthralled Downton Abbey viewers for six series. But some have questioned why Christianity, which would have formed a central part of the lives of the aristocracy in the early 20th century, is largely absent from the show. Now the man tasked with ensuring the historical accuracy of the series has revealed why Downton does not do God. Alastair Bruce, who serves as the show’s historical advisor, said that executives in charge of the series had ordered producers to “leave religion out of it”, for fear of alienating an increasingly atheistic public....

Kaliningrad, November 16, Interfax - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia called terrorism a new form of obsession and called for it to be fought not only using military methods, but also through education and culture. "The world is now faced with a different obsession, a different madness, which we call terrorism," the patriarch said after a liturgy in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Kaliningrad on Sunday. He said the tragedy that has occurred in Paris indicates "people's obsession to achieve political goals using any methods, even by destroying innocent people." "The fight against terrorism should not...

Sergiyev Posad, November 16, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church has called on people to learn the right lessons from the terrorist attacks in Paris and mobilize to fight terrorism. "I am deeply grieved for people, and those are right who sympathize and pray for victims killed in the French capital. Eternal memory to these people. May the Lord be merciful to them in His judgement. What has happened is not only a reason for grief, it's also a reason to ask yourself: is it not a lesson to us all, can Europe continue living like it lived before? And...

On 9/9/12 I got to teach my first class on Islam on the exact day I started studying Islam two years ago and in memory of the victims of 911. This first class is MY DREAM COME TRUE I started the class out with why they chose 911 to attack, showed the best presentation of the history of Jihad on 15 minutes by Bill Federer, played some of my appearance on the radio where I shared my HOW I BECAME AN ISLAMOPHOBE testimony and fielded questions from Jim Green, then I opened up for questions from the class attenders and...

Prayers offered at Christ the Savior Cathedral for the victims of terrorism

In the United States and in Italy the changes are most spectacular. With new “Bergoglio-style" bishops and cardinals. In Belgium, Danneels’s revenge against Ratzinger. The triumph of the St. Gallen club. Much more than reforming the Vatican curia and finances (to which he is applying himself more out of obligation than out of passion, with no comprehensive plan and too often relying on the wrong men and women), it is clear by now that Pope Francis wants to revolutionize the college of bishops. And he is doing so in a systematic way. The two talks that he gave this autumn...

A commenter writes: As an Irishman, Papism is in my blood. Irish Ultramontanism was pretty legendary and for good reason, but not for the reason most people think…The English had driven out our native aristocracy and over the ages of persecution and disenfranchisement, the priesthood was our only recourse of social leadership, the Pope was the only one who we could find succour and call our king. Was it in error? Perhaps, but you try being a Catholic in Ireland for the past few centuries and not be the same way, maybe you could find your path to Sainthood by...

To the Catholics who babble ecumenical nonsense, saying that the Koran is "a book of peace," here is what a great Saint has to say about it. If you feel you know better than he, God help you: "It would take too long to tell you all the stories about this famous impostor...Mohamed's religion consists of a monstrous mixture of Judaism, Paganism and Christianity. Mohamed propagated his religion, not through miracles or persuasive words, but through the force of arms. [It is] a religion that favors every sort of licentiousness and which, in a short time, allowed Mohamed to become...

From the world wide web and the government, the refugee matter has moved to the spiritual plane as well. The pope has asked believers to help refugees and to give them sanctuary. The Russian-language program of Latvian Television 7, Segodnya Vecherom, reavealed on Wednesday that not all Latvian Christians are ready to help people with a religion different from their own. The Pontifex Maximus was heard around here, but not everyone is keen on opening their doors and hearts. Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church admit that even though asylum seekers shouldn't be sorted by their religious affiliation, it's not...

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis on Saturday called the Paris terror attacks "a piece" of a "piecemeal Third World War," and said he is praying for the families of the victims and the entire French people.In a telephone interview at noon Rome-time with the Italian Bishops Conference official television network TV2000, the pope said he is "moved and saddened" by the carnage of Friday’s attacks in Paris."I am moved and saddened. And I don’t understand, but these things are difficult to understand; they are carried out by human beings," he said. "I am moved, saddened, and I am praying. I am very close...

This is the final group of bishops -- twelve elected by the Synod and three handpicked by Francis -- who will be governing the synods going forward. The original thread that was posted when the twelve were elected is here, and has a little bit more detail about how they were elected. Francis has now added his three, shown at the bottom of the chart. AFRICA Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Guinea Excellent Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier, archbishop of Durban, South Africa Excellent Mathieu Madega Lebouakehan, Bishop of Mouila, Gabon Excellent . AMERICAS Charles J....

The soul of Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, best known for the part of evil sorcerer Shang Tsung in the Mortal Kombat movies, has been captured by Russia – he has apparently decided to be baptized into the Orthodox Church. Tagawa, an American actor of Japanese descent, who took part in a new Russian film called The Priest-San, decided to abandon his faith and become a true follower of Jesus Christ’s orthodox teachings, Interfax reports. The news was spread via Facebook by one of his colleagues, Ivan Okhlobystin, an actor and prominent Russian religious figure. He shared a photo of Tagawa taken with...

Rome, Italy, Nov 12, 2015 / 03:18 pm (CNA).- Spanish liberation theologian Fr. Jon Sobrino, whose works were censured by the Vatican nearly a decade ago, is slated to take part in an event this Saturday at Rome's Urbaniana University. The gathering is aimed at republishing the "Catacombs Pact," a document signed after the Second Vatican Council by various future members of the Marxist school of thought. It was condemned in 1984 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed at that time by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Fr. Sobrino, a Jesuit priest born in Spain in 1938, had...

The Islamic State continues its march into Syria with its sights set on the town of Sadad, which consists of a large population of Syriac Christians who speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. According to Newsweek,500 Christian fighters, with the help of some Muslims, have so far prevented IS radicals from overrunning the majority Christian town. IS has already captured the town of Mahin, only 5 miles away from Sadad, which has provided the terror group a base of operations for renewed attacks against Sadad. The head of the Syriac Orthodox Christian Church, Mor Ignatius Aphrem Karim II, who is...

The French army is trying to persuade Pope Francis to scrap a visit to the Central African Republic (CAR) at the end of the month, just before a referendum and elections are due to take place, and is refusing to provide troops for his security detail, according to French media.France will not provide any soldiers for Pope Francis's security if he goes ahead with the visit on 29-30 November, sources told Wednesday's Le Monde newspaper.The 900-strong Sangaris contingent has a clearly defined mission, they say, and that is to provide security for the airport and help evacuation if necessary.Officials have...

In light of ongoing events I thought this might be appropriate.

In theaters this weekend, The 33, starring Antonio Banderas and Juliette Binoche, recounts the extraordinary story of the 2010 Chilean mining disaster that buried 33 miners 2300 feet underground for 69 days before their unprecedented rescue. The world was riveted by the story; one of the miners, Mario Sepúlveda — dubbed “Super Mario” by the media, and played in the film by Banderas — acted as spokesman for the group in daily video logs, and his face became familiar all over the globe. Fewer would recognize the face or the name of the man whose plan — and drilling equipment...

...the cause for canonization of Father Emil Kapaun, an Army chaplain who died in a prisoner-of-war camp during the Korean War, has taken a major step forward. Bishop [Carl] Kemme and priests from the diocese [of Wichita, KS] personally delivered the nearly 1,100-page report on Father Kapaun's life, officially called a positio, to Cardinal Angelo Amato, the prefect of the [Congregation for the Causes of Saints]. This step had been in the making since 1993, when the Vatican named Father Kapaun (pronounced Ka-PON), who was a priest of the Wichita Diocese, a "Servant of God." In a letter Bishop Kemme...

Events of recent memory have left my head spinning in disbelief—“Caitlyn,” same-sex so-called “marriage,” three women “marrying” in South America, and, yes, “gay Catholics” and “chaste gay couples.” With me, you may wonder how all this has emerged in a short few decades of social upheaval. I may have an answer: Society has constructed an unreal cultural landscape in which things that are not sexuality are passed off as sexuality. Even a majority of Catholics are, perhaps unwittingly, swallowing this unreality, hook, line, and sinker.The fabric of this false landscape is language—language that frames everyone and everything in a...