Last August marked the anniversary of the 2008 massacre of more than 100 Christians at the hands of a Hindu mob in Kandhamal district in Orissa (Odisha) State, India—and the culprits, though most of them have been identified, have yet to be tried. Six years later, a Catholic priest who narrowly escaped a most gruesome […]
America will be a more dangerous and poorer place.
In an exclusive interview with C-Fam’s Friday Fax, UNICEF denies allegations from the Catholic bishops of Kenya that a tetanus vaccine program in their country sponsored by the UNICEF and WHO is a covert population control program. The UN agencies issued a joint statement last week in which they accuse Kenyan bishops of spreading “misinformation” […]
A speech that has slipped through the cracks of time.
“People are dying every day and in most cases with no one to give them a decent burial–they are left to rot; their homes and properties looted.” Since 2009 and the start of Boko Haram’s reign of terror in Nigeria, the Diocese of Maiduguri has been the worst hit by attacks from the extremist Islamic […]
Where Islam goes, the desert rises.
“War is a terrible and cruel thing.” SISTER MARIA of Nazareth has committed herself to an extraordinary mission. The Argentinian nun from the Institute of the Incarnate Word has been living in Aleppo, Syria, for the past two months, ministering to a traumatized Christian community in the former million-strong metropolis in the north of the […]
The village of Kaa is in the north of the Bekaa Valley, close to the Syrian border. It has a population of some 13,000 Christians, most of them Melkites. After the city of Zahle, this is the home of the country’s the largest Catholic population. Kaa is surrounded by mostly Shiite Muslim communities. Kaa has […]
Ideas are roads to conclusion, and conclusions lead to policies.
I’m not asking for a perfect president.
The Vatican accused a UN committee of intolerance against Christians and interfering with the free exercise of religion in a scathing reply to a UN committee released to the press last Friday. The Vatican’s official response to explosive comments made by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child earlier this year, which told […]
Storming Falluja, Ten Years Ago Fallujans flee, of your fighters be rid, Your city, your honor our GI’s demand, We’ll find them, we’ll kill them, they cannot be hid, Uprising is doomed to sink in the sand. Your town is besieged; we storm and we blast, By land and by air, with engines of war […]
No efforts can overcome a flawed strategy.
“We are strong in our faith, rooted in our history. We have been here for 2000 years. We refuse to go!” Iraq and Syria are in turmoil. In Iraq, Islamic radicals of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are threatening to plunge the country back into civil war. In Syria, a ruthless regime […]
It’s a sad fact that ISIS has become part of our vocabulary, but many of us still don’t know a lot about this terrorist movement. At Aleteia, news editor John Burger spent time with some people knowledgeable abaout this group, and created a top 10 list. Burger spoke to Father Elias D. Mallon, external Affairs […]
“They are facing a human catastrophe and risk a real genocide. They need, water, food, shelter…” These were the words of the leader of Iraq’s biggest Catholic community as he made an impassioned plea for help to the international community following the fall of Iraq’s largest Christian town on the night of August 6th-7th. In […]
The lamps are lit again and Europe is at peace; but it is the peace of senescence.
Anne Roback Morse also contributed to this article. The language of the e-mails is hyperbolic and hate-filled. They come from population control groups that are indignant about the House of Representatives Billwhich would re-institute the Mexico City Policy. They call it a “Mean-spirited, anti-women agenda.” And they say it’s “Playing ping-pong politics with women’s lives,” “Out of […]
For the first time, Catholic nuns have been the target of a concerted, brutal attack in Bangladesh involving a late-night attack by dozens of men that lasted over an hour. “50 to 60 armed men attacked the Boldipukur mission on July 7 at 2 a.m., and specifically the presbytery, the convent and the hospital,” Bishop […]
“We fear a civil war. If the various different opposing internal parties do not succeed in finding an agreement, then we must expect the worst. Another war would mean the end, especially for us Christians.” This was the message from Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Saad Syroub of Baghdad, speaking to Catholic charity Aid to the Church […]
[Editor’s note: we know that there are very strong opinions on the other side and we are willing to publish the contrary view] Diversionary foreign policy, and/or wars intended for diversion, are old tactics instigated by governments to distract people from domestic problems. Recent Western policy in promoting the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian President, […]
During hearings that one participant described as “surreal,” United Nations representatives this week suggested that the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion in the case of rape and incest constitute a violation of the UN Charter Against Torture. The Vatican was called before a two-day hearing in Geneva so a UN committee could question whether its […]
Several years ago, in 2007, I wrote an account of my visit to Shanghai which focused, primarily, on the city’s and China’s astounding economic boom, then achieving 11 percent growth in GDP for the third straight quarter. This torrid pace has throttled back a bit to 7.4 percent. I noted that, with the economic growth, “A lot of pollution […]
