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Vatican Weekend for June 10th, 2017 features a report on Pope Francis’ Wednesday general audience where he appealed to Christians, Jews and Muslims to pray for peace in the Middle East, the third and final part of our series on contemplation featuring Fr. Paul Murray plus a report on an educational lifeline for a lost generation of refugees across the Middle East.Listen to this program produced and presented by Susy Hodges:
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis met on Friday with participants in the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, who have been discussing the key contribution of women to interfaith relations.Listen to Philippa Hitchen’s report: The Pope began by noting how often women’s work and dignity is threatened by violence and hatred which tears families and societies apart.Faced with the challenges of our globalized world, he said, there is a vital need to recognize the abilities of women to teach values of unity and fraternity which can transform the human family. It is therefore to the benefit of society that women have a growing presence in social, political and economic life - as well as in the life of the Church - at national and international level, the Pope said. Women’s rights, he insisted, must be affirmed and protected, including, if necessary, through legal means.In their role as educators in the family and beyond, the Pope cont...
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Friday urged Christians not to fall into the trap of vanity in moments of pain and sorrow but rather resort to prayer patience and hope in God. Do not be misled by the "cosmetic beauty" of vanity, but let that "joy of God" enter your hearts, thanking the Lord for the "salvation" he grants us. Pope Francis made the exhortation in his homily at Mass Friday morning, in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta residence in the Vatican.Reflecting on the first reading from the Book of Tobit, the Pope went through the story of a father-in-law and a daughter-in-law: Tobit, the father of Tobiah who became blind, and Sarah, Tobiah's wife, accused in the past of being responsible for the death of some men. The Pope explained it’s a passage in which one understands how the Lord carries forward the "history" and "the life of persons, including ours”. In fact, he said, Tobit and Sarah ...
Rome, Italy, Jun 9, 2017 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- When Fr. Ragheed Aziz Ganni was confronted by armed men after celebrating the Eucharist at his Chaldean Catholic parish in Mosul, they asked him why he was still there and why he hadn't closed the church as they had demanded."How can I close the house of God?" he responded, right before they shot and killed him, alongside three friends and subdeacons at the parish: Waheed, Ghasan, and Basman.An Iraqi priest born in 1972 in a town in the Plain of Ninevah, Fr. Ganni moved to Rome in 1996 to study at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas on a scholarship from the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need.In 2003 he decided to return to Iraq, despite the war following the American invasion, and the persecution of Christians that was taking place. He served at a parish in Mosul until the day of his death, June 3, 2007.Ten years after his death, Fr. Ganni's friend and fellow priest, Fr. Rebwar Basa, ...
Washington D.C., Jun 9, 2017 / 06:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Iraq’s Christians have suffered persecution for centuries, yet their faith has survived and the community will remain, provided their material needs are met, a Chaldean Catholic bishop has said.“The story of suffering of Iraqi Christians is an ongoing phenomenon,” Bishop Bawai Soro, auxiliary bishop of the Chaldean Eparchy of Saint Peter the Apostle of San Diego, told CNA in an interview. “For two thousand years, it’s a story of suffering, a suffering Church,” he added, a “Church of the martyrs.”Bishop Soro, a native of Iraq who came to the United States as a refugee in 1976, related of how his grandparents had told him of the massacre of Assyrian and Chaldean Christians in the region around the time of World War I, where hundreds of thousands of Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire were killed or dispersed by the new progressive government. “The same thing, the whole sto...
BIDI BIDI, Uganda (AP) -- Joy Diko recalls that the government soldiers who besieged her town were young enough to be her children....
LONDON (AP) -- The Latest on Britain's parliamentary election (all times local):...
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump on Friday broke his silence on Twitter following explosive testimony by fired FBI Director James Comey, declaring "total and complete vindication."...
Salem, Ore., Jun 9, 2017 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Oregon Senate has passed an advance directive bill that critics say would allow the starvation and dehydration of patients who have dementia or mental illness.Earlier this week, Oregon Right to Life executive director Gayle Atteberry said the bill was “written in a deceiving manner.” She said its goal was “to save money at the expense of starving and dehydrating dementia and mentally ill patients to death.”S.B. 494 passed the Oregon Senate by four votes on June 8. The bill would remove existing safeguards that protect conscious patients’ access to ordinary food and water even after they have lost the ability to make decisions about their care.The bill was drafted in response to the case of Ashland, Ore. resident Nora Harris, who suffered from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. She lost the ability to communicate and the fine motor skills needed to feed herself. She would eat and drink only wi...
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The night started with a catfish throw....
