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The United States called on Belgrade to pull its forces back from the border with Kosovo on Friday (Sep 29) after detecting what it called an unprecedented Serbian military build-up. Serbia had deployed sophisticated tanks and artillery on the frontier after deadly clashes erupted at a monastery in northern Kosovo last week, the White House warned. The violence in which a Kosovo policeman and three Serb gunmen were killed marked one of the gravest escalations for years in Kosovo, a former Serbian breakaway province.

Subiaco Abbey, in Subiaco, Arkansas, had its altar smashed with a hammer, and relics inside the altar stolen on Jan. 5, 2023. A suspect has been arrested and is set to be charged in connection with the attack. | Subiaco AbbeyBoston, Mass., Jan 6, 2023 / 13:51 pm The altar of an Arkansas Benedictine monastery was destroyed Thursday, and several relics of ancient saints were stolen. Subiaco Abbey in Subiaco, Arkansas, said in a press release that on Jan. 5, a man using “a regular hammer and sledgehammer/ax” began destroying the abbey’s marble altar by smashing it in different places....

BARRINGTON, R.I. (WPRI) — A former monastery left vacant when the last nuns moved out has gone on the market for over $3 million, and now Barrington officials are seeking to buy the property. With their numbers dwindling, the final six Roman Catholic sisters of the Discalced Carmelite order last year decided to vacate the location on Watson Avenue where they had lived a cloistered life of prayer since 1957. “It’s really the only option available to us at this time,” one of the six, Sister Sue Lamb, told the Rhode Island Catholic in October. “We’ve lost about 14 sisters...

Bannon planned to teach the art of his brand of politics at the school. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s plans for a far-right nationalist school have been halted by Italian authorities. Bannon hoped to run the school out of an ancient monastery near Rome, but officials say they are revoking rights to the grounds for failure to maintain the site and pay fees. In a statement released Friday, Gianluca Vacca, an official with Italy’s cultural ministry, said that it was the government’s “duty” to revoke the rights to the Certosa de Trisulti monastery that the Human Dignity Institute,...

Benedictine monks in Chama Canyon, New Mexico, encounter God through work, prayer and silence in the wildernessIn 1964, Father Aelred Wall, OSB (1917-84), and two other monks left Mount Saviour Monastery in New York to scout out remote locations to establish a new “daughter,” or off-shoot monastery. After visiting Maine and Minnesota, the monks came to northern New Mexico and laid eyes on a rancho in the wilderness of Chama Canyon, 75 miles north of Santa Fe. They declared, “This is it!” and established the Monastery of Christ in the Desert of Abiquiu (www.christdesert.org). At a time when religious communities...

A unique monastery--Russia's own Holy Land, founded by the controversial Patriarch Nikon in 1656--has finally been rebuilt in MoscowThe breathtakingly beautiful, architecturally unique and historically significant New Jerusalem monastery has occupied a place of unique veneration among Russians during its 350-year history. A few years before the Revolution, it was visited by about 35,000 people annually. It was originally founded in 1656 by Patriarch Nikon, who built it to imitate structurally and thematically the Church of Christ’s Tomb in Jerusalem. This was done so that Russians who could not make the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem could get a taste of...

This amazing monastery, which containing relics from empty tomb of Jesus Christ, was originally built by the Russian Church's most controversial leader, and now restored in all its gloryNew Jerusalem Monastery, founded in 1656 by Patriarch Nikon, remains one of Russia's holiest places. This patriarch's reforms to church services sparked a major schism in the Russian Church, creating the sect of Old Believers. While Patriarch Nikon may still be one of the most controversial figures of Russian Church history, one thing we can all agree upon is the beauty of his colossal monastery. President Putin was very impressed by its...

Considered one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world still in operation, the Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai is home to more than two centuries of history — and more than that of legend. Tradition claims, for example, that the main altar of the monastery is built on the spot where the Burning Bush first addressed Moses. But the monastery, declared a world heritage site by UNESCO, also holds other seats of honor. For example, it accommodates the oldest continuously operating active library in the world.From the day it was founded in the sixth century (between 548 and...

I first met Brother Augustine Wilmeth when he was one of the students where I served as chaplain. As a convert, he was intensely interested not only in his new Catholic faith but in the more traditional expressions of life and worship.I followed his progress through the years and had the chance last summer to visit him a few months before he took his first vows as a monk at the Benedictine monastery that has been reestablished at Norcia in Italy.Brother Augustine spoke to me for Aleteia about his vocation, his life in the monastery and his work brewing...

The Ladder of Heavenly UnityMoses approached the divine fire of the Burning Bush with the footsteps of his mind bare, completely free from any human trains of thought, wrote Saint Maximos the Confessor. Continuing Orthodox monasticism’s oldest unbroken tradition, Sinai monks still liturgize, shoeless, over the roots of the Burning Bush. On the holy ground where Moses was commanded to remove his sandals – together with all earthly logic – monks turn diversity’s polarizing forces to unity – some of the ways St. Catherine’s Monastery of Sinai brings Byzantium’s patristic spirit into the modern era as living tradition.One need look...

[Syria] Palmyra [Syria] Mar Elian Monastery [Syria] Apamea [Syria] Dura-europos [Syria] Mari [Iraq] Hatra [Iraq] Nineveh [Iraq] Mosul Museum And Libraries [Iraq] Nimrud [Iraq] Khorsabad [Iraq] Mar Behnam Monastery [Iraq] Mosque Of The Prophet Yunus [Iraq] Imam Dur Mausoleum

The monastery was originally built in the fourth century Islamists destroy 5th-century Mar Elian monasteryISIS fighters have demolished a monastery in central Syria, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.The Mar Elian monastery in the town of Qaryatain near Homs, was captured by the terrorists  from the Syrian Army two weeks ago. This week they used bulldozers to raze the holy site,Mar Elian is also where Fr Jacques Mourad was kidnapped in May. He remains one of six clergy in Syria who have been kidnapped by rebel groups, their fates unknown.Qaryatain is near a road linking the ancient...

www.suntimes.com Back to regular viewhttp://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-convent03.html 'KKK,' 'Go away' painted on religious statues January 3, 2006BY GARY WISBY Staff Reporter A religious order's plans to build a community in rural McHenry County were greeted with heated opposition from neighbors before approval was granted last summer. But even they were shocked by what vandals did to statues of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary at the Fraternite Notre Dame monastery on New Year's Eve. Someone spray-painted "Killer," "KKK," "666," "Go away" and "Leave" on the figures. They wrote an obscene message in snow at the base of one statue and stole an...

The purge of Christians from northern Iraq continues under the hands of the Sunni jihadist group, the Islamic State--formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). ISIS militants seized the famous Mar Behnam or St. Behnam monastery this week, a fourth century Christian landmark, and forced monks to leave immediately. According to the Agence France-Presse, the monastery, a famous landmark of early Christianity, is now fully in the hands of ISIS jihadists ... The monastery itself is one of the oldest monuments in the history of Christianity

Day by day, we hear new horrors about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. Now, believers living under ISIS control in northern Iraq must choose between conversion to Islam, payment of protection money, or death. Ancient churches and shrines are already in flames. I want to concentrate on a unexamined aspect of this problem, one that has done much to shape what we know about the history and nature of early Christianity. In one particular historical era, anti-Christian violence did irreparable damage to our historical sources.   The story goes back to the dual origins of monasticism,...

ST. MARYS, ELK COUNTY - The St. Joseph Monastery in St. Marys is the oldest in the United States, and after 161 years of serving the community, it's closing its doors. At its peak in the 60s and 70s, the St. Joseph Monastery in St. Marys, Elk County had 125 sisters. Today, there are 17 left, ages 58 to 91, and they'll have to find a new home. We spoke with many people in the St. Marys community who say the St. Joseph Monastery is a huge institution for the community. They say the news of it closing is devastating....

One of the world's oldest monasteries has been forced to close its doors because of the deteriorating security situation in Egypt, devastating the economy of the remote surrounding area, it has emerged. ...

Israeli tourists visiting a shrine in Bangkok were shocked when a child, dressed in an orange Buddhist monk's robe, approached them and began speaking in perfect Hebrew. The 12-year-old Israeli boy has been staying in a monastery in northern Thailand, and has no idea until when he will remain there. When asked whether he wanted to be taken back home, he answered: "I told everyone already, it's fine, I'm used to it." The story was revealed on Tuesday by Israel's Channel 2 TV, which aired the tourists' conversation with the child. According to an inquiry by the Foreign Ministry, the...

Belgrade: Albanians last night completely destroyed the monastery “Assumption of the Virgin” in southern Serbia. Monastery of the Assumption of Virgin” which is located in the vicinity of Vladicin Han was vandalized last night. The door was smashed, and the entire interior were broken. The money from the candle sales and other item inside the monastery is stolen, and all the icons were smashed. Mother Paraskeva (62 years old) confirmed this information. She was very upset fear for her safety. “I’m afraid they will come back, but I’m not going anywhere. I’m here alone and old, but let them come,...

Extremists puncture tires in 2 separate incidents, spray-paint "The Maccabis will succeed" on wall near J'lem monastery.“Price-tag” vandals targeted sites in Jerusalem and near Ramallah overnight Tuesday, spraying extremist graffiti and puncturing car tires. The words “tag mahir” – “price tag” – have become affiliated with the extreme fringe of the settlement and right-wing movements. For the second time in less than a year, vandals targeted the Monastery of the Cross in Jerusalem’s Sacher Park. This time, the vandals wrote: “Happy Hanukka, the Maccabees will succeed” on a stone wall surrounding the structure. They also spraypainted graffiti on a car...