AFP

Kidnap of Syrian bishops sparks global concern

April 24, 2013 Featured News

23/4/13 DAMASCUS — The kidnapping of two Syrian bishops, reportedly by Chechen fighters, sparked international concern on Tuesday, as rebels battled regime and Hezbollah forces in Homs province, a watchdog said. In Israel, meanwhile, a senior military intelligence official said President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime has used chemical weapons, including sarin, against rebels on several occasions in [...]

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Syrian bishops in hands of ‘Chechens’: church sources

April 24, 2013 Featured News

Agence France-Presse – 23/4/13 The kidnappers of two Orthodox bishops seized in northern Syria are Chechen fighters, sources in the Syriac and Greek Orthodox dioceses in Aleppo said on Tuesday. “The news which we have received is that an armed group… (of) Chechens stopped the car and kidnapped the two bishops while the driver was [...]

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Serbia buries 13 victims of shooting spree

April 13, 2013 Featured News

FOCUS News Agency – 13/4/13 Velika Ivanca. Church bells rang out in the tiny Serbian village of Velika Ivanca on Friday, as hundreds of tearful mourners buried 13 people gunned down in Serbia’s worst massacre in two decades, AFP reported. Mourners carrying flowers and candles and mostly dressed in black queued to pay their respects to the six [...]

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Bells toll for last Serbs in Kosovo capital

February 19, 2013 Featured News
A sprinkling of Kosovo Serbs attend a religious service at the Saint Nicolas Orthodox church in Pristina on February 10, 2013. After the 1999 NATO bombing campaign that forced out Belgrade security forces, some 200,000 Serbs fled the territory fearing reprisal attacks by extremists.

  19/2/13 AFP – The bells of Pristina’s sole Orthodox Church toll for a liturgy that will bring brief spiritual peace to a small group of Serbs, remaining members of a dwindling community in Kosovo, five years after it broke away from Serbia. At the Saint Nicolas church, three elderly Serbs listen to the mass [...]

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Icon-writing, a path to recovery for prisoners in Poland

February 16, 2013 Featured News
A Bialystok Prison jailer checking prisoners going for orthodox icon painting classes. Photo courtesy: AFP

Maja Czarnecka – 16/2/13 Bialystok, Poland, Feb 16, 2013 (AFP) — Behind the bars of a prison on Poland’s eastern fringe, a dozen women serving time are lost in concentration as they learn the intricate art of icon-writing in the Orthodox Christian tradition. The centuries’ old craft, which typically displays the Virgin with the baby [...]

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Ancient church frescoes created by renowned icon painter Onufri stolen in Albania

January 20, 2013 Featured News

20/1/13 TIRANA (AFP).- Several frescoes by a master painter were vandalised and some of their parts stolen from a 16th-century Orthodox church in southern Albania, an official said Wednesday. “Several frescoes were savagely damaged with axes and knives while some of their parts were stolen,” Arber Kadija, a culture ministry official, told AFP. Fragments of [...]

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Syrian Christians ‘pray for peace’

December 25, 2012 Featured News

25/12/12 AFP – In the heart of Damascus, more than 1,000 people attended Christmas mass on Monday, praying for peace to return to Syria, after almost two years of bloodshed. “I pray that peace and safety returns to the hearts of all Syrians,” said Heba Shawi, 24, a Catholic attending mass at Notre Dame church [...]

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Two Sudan Coptic priests arrested after ‘baptism’

December 24, 2012 Featured News

By AFP Khartoum-23/12/12 Two priests from the Coptic Orthodox Church in Sudan have been arrested after the religious conversion of a Muslim in the Islamist-run state, church sources said. “I understand there was someone from the Arab origin that accepted Christ and was baptized by them,” leading to their arrest within the past few days, [...]

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Russia church leader embarks on Holy Land visit

November 9, 2012 News

8/11/2012 MOSCOW (AFP)—Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on Friday will make his first visit to the Holy Land since becoming head of the powerful church in 2009, in a trip which underlines his global influence as a religious leader. Kirill’s first official visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories will be held “under the sign of [...]

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Controversial cathedral reopens door in Georgia after its ‘restoration’

September 21, 2012 Featured News

AFP/Kutaisi 21/9/2012 Georgia yesterday reopened a world-renowned medieval cathedral in the ex-Soviet state’s second city Kutaisi which has been restored despite concerns raised by global cultural agency Unesco. The consecration ceremony was attended by Georgian Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II and President Mikhail Saakashvili as well as representatives of opposition parties which are challenging the ruling [...]

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Christians, Muslims, Jews call for peace from Sarajevo

September 11, 2012 Featured News

AFP 10/9/2012 SARAJEVO, Sept 10 – Leaders of Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Muslim and Jewish communities Sunday made a pressing call for peace from Bosnia which was the scene of the worst atrocities committed in Europe since World War II. Stressing the “commitment of Serb people to the strengthening of peace” Serb Orthodox Church Patriarch Irinej [...]

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‘Jesus is a monkey’ daubed on Jerusalem monastery wall

September 4, 2012 Featured News

Menahem Kahana / AFP – Getty Images A Trappist monk stands between graffiti reading in Hebrew, “Jesus is a monkey” (L) and “mutual guarantee, Ramat Migron and Maoz Ester” (West Bank settlements) (R), which was sprayed on the wall of the Latrun Monastery between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on Tuesday after unknown people set the [...]

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Attacks on Christians on the rise: bishop

August 5, 2012 Featured News

3/8/2012 Cairo – A senior Egyptian Coptic bishop said on Friday attacks on Christians are on the rise and criticised the inclusion of only one Copt in Islamist President Mohamed Morsi’s government. “The general climate is turning against Christians,” said Bishop Morcos. “Assaults on Christians have increased. It’s not just a matter of having one [...]

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Christian ‘forced conversion’ claim roils Gaza

July 17, 2012 Featured News

AFP 17/7/2012 GAZA CITY: Gaza’s Hamas government on Tuesday denied claims that a Christian man had been forced to convert to Islam, saying he had willingly changed religion. The statement came a day after the Orthodox Church in Gaza accused an unnamed Islamic organisation of “kidnapping” 24-year-old Ramez alAmash, along with a woman and three [...]

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Georgia church declares ID cards ‘Satan-free’

July 6, 2012 Featured News

AFP 6/7/2012 TBILISI – Georgia’s powerful Orthodox Church has assured believers that the ex-Soviet state’s new electronic identity cards do not carry the mark of Satan after being petitioned by worried worshippers. “The Holy Synod states that from the point of view of theological and ecclesiastical teachings, ID cards as they exist today do not [...]

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Church extends voter registration for papal election

June 22, 2012 Featured News

Photographed by AFP Al-Masry Al-Youm 21/06/2012 The Coptic Orthodox Church on Wednesday extended the voter registration process for papal elections from June to mid-July. The new pope will succeed Pope Shenouda III, who died on 17 March at the age of 89, after a long struggle with disease. The extension will allow Copts in Russia [...]

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We are no tax cheats, says Church of Greece

February 23, 2012 News

AFP 23/2/2012 ATHENS – The Church of Greece denied media reports accusing it of tax evasion on Wednesday, saying the total amount of taxes paid in 2011 was over 12.5 million euros (S$20.8 million). “The Church of Greece … has never requested unequal tax treatment in relation to other Greek non-profit organisations,” the top church [...]

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Egyptian village evicts 8 Coptic families over rumors of interfaith affair

February 15, 2012 Featured News
Local police mediated a deal to evict eight Egyptian Coptic families from their village following rumors of an illicit affair between a Coptic man and a Muslim woman. (Reuters)

By AFP CAIRO 14/2/2012 Eight Coptic Christian families have been evicted from a village in northern Egypt following clashes sparked by rumors of an illicit affair between a Coptic man and a Muslim woman, a rights group said on Sunday. The decision to evict the families came after a meeting of village elders – a [...]

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Iraq confirms death sentences for church attack

February 4, 2012 Featured News
The Syrian-Catholic Church of the Holy Family in Kirkuk after a car bomb exploded. (File photo)

By AFP BAGHDAD 2/2/2012 An Iraqi appeals court confirmed the death sentences for three men convicted in connection with a massacre at a Baghdad church last year, the spokesman for the Supreme Judicial Council said Thursday. On October 31 militants stormed Our Lady of Salvation church in central Baghdad, killing 44 worshippers, two priests and [...]

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Divine intervention saves shell-struck Syrian convent

February 3, 2012 Featured News
Founded in 547 AD, the convent of Our Lady of Saidnaya, is a leading Antiochian Orthodox nunnery which overlooks a mountain village of the same name, just 35 kilometers (22) miles from Damascus. (File photo)

By AFP SAIDNAYA 2/2/2012 Divine intervention prevented a shell that pierced the walls of a Syrian convent from detonating, swears the mother superior of Our Lady of Saidnaya, a spiritual retreat near Damascus. “The Virgin Mary stopped the shell from exploding with her own hands,” said Mother Verone, who interpreted the close call as a [...]

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Security tight as Egypt Copts celebrate Christmas

January 6, 2012 Featured News
Pope Shenuda III (C), head of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church, meets with Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayeb (2nd left), Egyptian Religious Endowments Minister Mohammed Abdel Fadil al-Qawsi (R), Egyptian Mufti Ali Gomaa (2nd right) and former religious endowments minister Hamdi Zaqzuq (L) in Cairo on January 4, 2012 as they pay him a visit on the occasion of Christmas which Copts celebrate on January 7. (AFP)

6/1/2012 AFP A massive plan to protect Egyptian churches swung into action on Friday as Coptic Christians prepared to celebrate their first post-revolution Christmas, with Islamist leaders attending for the first time. “The interior ministry has drawn up a huge security plan in cooperation with the armed forces to protect all the churches of Egypt [...]

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Settlers breach closed Israeli military zone near Jordan

December 18, 2011 News

14/12/2011 OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (Agencies) – Some 30 Jewish settlers broke into a Christian baptismal site late Monday in a closed military zone along the Jordanian-Israeli border to stage a protest, Agence France-Presse reported. The Associated Press reported that the radical settlers cut a fence to enter the closed military zone along the border with Jordan [...]

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Focus on religion was ‘grave mistake’ by political parties, expert says

December 2, 2011 Featured News

Egyptian Coptic Christian women help voters find their registration numbers outside a polling station in the Manshiet Nasser district of Cairo on Nov. 29. (AFP Photo/Mahmud Hams) By:Heba Fahmy /Daily News Egypt 2/12/2011 CAIRO: Egypt’s political parties made a “grave mistake” by focusing on religion while campaigning ahead of parliamentary elections, said Mazen Hassan, professor [...]

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Relic leaves Russia after ‘blessing three million’

November 28, 2011 Featured News

AFP 28/11/2011 MOSCOW – A relic said to have belonged to the Virgin Mary left Russia Monday after a stay that saw it worshipped by three million people in a potent display of the power of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Belt of the Virgin Mary attracted a million people in Moscow alone, inspiring them [...]

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Twenty-three people have died in violent clashes between Coptic Christians and security forces in Egypt

October 10, 2011 Featured News

AFP 10/10/2011 AT least twenty-three people have died in clashes between Coptic Christians and Egyptian security forces, in the worst sectarian violence since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February. The health health ministry said a total of 174 people were injured in violence during a Coptic Christian protest in central Cairo on Sunday, [...]

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