In my work as a journalist, I try to personalize what is otherwise an ‘issue’ and apply universal principles of human rights to policies that impact human lives. That’s the case for many national and global news stories, breaking and current or ongoing. When President Donald Trump issued the Executive Order on immigration and refugees […]
Held by terrorist captors, an Iraqi woman named Khalia resisted their demands that she abandon her Christian faith. Her story was told at the UN this week, along with other accounts of atrocities suffered by Christians and religious minorities in the Middle East at the hands of the Islamic State, or ISIS. According to experts, […]
By Oliver Maksan NEW YORK—The conflict in Syria entered its sixth year in March, but the ceasefire and ongoing talks in Geneva between the major warring parties have for the first time given rise to a glimmer of hope that an end to the conflict might be possible. However, real security and peace remain elusive, […]
By Eliane També ALEPPO, Syria—War rages on in Syria. Aleppo, the country’s major business center—what’s left of it—is a city at war, subject to regular bombardments by various factions fighting for dominance. Last year, a mother of two sons, 48-year-old Joumana Jarjour, a Melkite Catholic, was gravely wounded by scrapnel from a rocket that landed […]
By Oliver Maksan NEW YORK—Thousands of Syrian Christians are fleeing after fierce attacks by ISIS on the town of Sadad and its surroundings, reported Syrian Orthodox Archbishop Selwanos Boutros Alnemeh of Homs. Sadad is some 35 miles south of Homs and 65 miles north east of the Syrian capital of Damascus. The region has been […]
By Marta Petrosillo ROME—“We Christians are determined to stay on in Syria and continue to give our witness.” Grim-faced and speaking with determination, Chaldean Archbishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo, Syria, addressed media here today. The archbishop commented on the mass exodus of Syrians, spurred on in recent weeks by the welcome shown by some European […]
“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 […]
“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 […]
A priest helping Christians sheltering in Syria’s Old City of Homs has been murdered. Dutch Jesuit Fr. Frans van der Lugt was shot twice in the head this morning, April 7. Speaking from Syria, fellow Jesuit Fr. Ziad Hillal told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), “Fr. Frans was apparently killed by […]
In spite of an uncertain future, Christians in Syria do not want to leave. This was the message of a local Catholic leader, who said, “We Christians are living in fear, the future is uncertain, but we want to stay in our homeland.” The statement came from the Melkite Greek-Catholic Archbishop of Homs, Hama and […]
Twelve nuns kidnapped by jihadists in Syria last December were set free yesterday (Sunday, March 9th). Patriarch Gregorios III, head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, broke the news to a team from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), who had just arrived in Lebanon to visit projects supporting refugees from Syria. The Damascus-based […]
The leader of Catholics in Syria has issued an urgent appeal to the faithful in Syria, and people throughout the world, to pray for the success of this week’s Geneva II peace conference to be held in Montreux, Switzerland. Damascus-based Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregorios III has called on every Syrian Catholic, whatever their circumstances, […]
Horrific details are emerging of atrocities carried out in a Christian town in Syria in what is being seen as the worst act of anti-Christian persecution since the war in Syria began. Inhabitants of Sadad, near Homs, who fled the largely Syrian Orthodox town when rebels attacked last month, are now returning home to discover […]
A Syrian prelate, ordained a bishop only last month, has spoken of his dismay at the country’s mass exodus of Christians, but he is convinced that the future of one of the world’s oldest Church communities is assured. Melkite Greek Catholic Bishop Nicolas Antiba of Bosra and Hauran described how his faithful in southern Syria […]
A few days ago former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, was having a discussion with her five-year-old grandson about possible war in Syria. She told the press that she explained to him that “hundreds of children” had been killed in Syria and that her defense of going into that country was that the killing […]
The left has a long history of marrying incompetence and malice.
Catholics are supposed to be the champions of human rights. We are 25 percent of the U.S. population, yet Barack Obama was twice elected president and he wages numerous kinds of war both here and abroad. As Congress weighs Obama’s plan to bomb the Syrian people, Catholics and all Americans need to understand what’s at […]
“Do you fast? Then feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, visit the sick, do not forget the imprisoned, have pity on the tortured, comfort those who grieve and who weep, be merciful, humble, kind, calm, patient, sympathetic, forgiving, reverent, truthful and pious, so that God might accept your fasting and might plentifully grant […]
Dear Brothers and Sisters, Hello! Today, dear brothers and sisters, I wish to add my voice to the cry which rises up with increasing anguish from every part of the world, from every people, from the heart of each person, from the one great family which is humanity: it is the cry for peace! It […]
Pope Francis, as well as other Christian leaders in the Middle East and around Europe are sounding the alarm of a possible global conflict should the US and other western powers launch an attack on Syria. In an interview with Vatican Radio yesterday, the Syrian Chaldean Catholic bishop of Aleppo, Antoine Audo, said that armed […]
A graphic account of the deepening human suffering and violence in Syria has come from a priest ministering to people in one of the areas worst affected by the conflict. In a report describing the devastated city of Homs, the priest details his desperate struggle to provide basic food, shelter and medicine to more than […]
A Damascus bomb blast which killed a deacon in training shows that a Christian district of the city is in acute danger, according to a leading Catholic bishop. Benjamin Camil, 35, was on his way home on Tuesday morning, March 26th, after distributing food to destitute people, when he was killed instantly by the explosive. […]
Half of Iraq’s indigenous Christians are gone due to the unleashed forces of jihad, many of them fleeing to nearby Syria; yet, as the Assad regime comes under attack by al-Qaeda and others, the jihad now seeps into Syria, where Christians are experiencing a level of persecution unprecedented in the nation’s modern history. Likewise, some […]
