Tag: Christianity

Kiev, February 9, 2024

Photo: pomisna.info     

In another move against Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Kiev City Council voted yesterday to give the land plots on which the Holy Dormition-Kiev Caves Lavra to the state-run National Preserve for use.

The Preserve’s press service called the 70-0 vote an “historic” and “fateful” decision, that will, in its words, “allow the Lavra to rid itself of the presence of the ‘Russian world’ forever with its narratives aimed at destroying Ukrainian spirituality and culture.”

Recall that the Lavra has been state owned since the times of Soviet atheism, although it was the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that rebuilt it from its dilapidated state over the past 30+ years. Ukrainian Orthodox Church fully expelled from Kiev Caves Lavra by end of MarchThe Church has been informed that it has until March 29 to leave the Lavra altogether. The Lower Lavra, which the UOC still had access to, is home to the actual caves, the monks’ cells, and the Kiev Theological Seminary and Academy.

“>At the end of 2022, the Church was expelled from the Upper Lavra, which includes the main cathedrals, and in Ukrainian Orthodox Church fully expelled from Kiev Caves Lavra by end of MarchThe Church has been informed that it has until March 29 to leave the Lavra altogether. The Lower Lavra, which the UOC still had access to, is home to the actual caves, the monks’ cells, and the Kiev Theological Seminary and Academy.”>March of 2023, the state also demanded that the monastery and Church leave the Lower Lavra, which includes the caves and monastic cells, though the Ukrainian people who confess Orthodoxy have prayerfully defended their beloved monastery, and the monks remain there to this day.

According to the Preserve, the land under Lavra has not been legislated for more than 30 years, and the issue became more acute after the termination of the lease with the monastery.

“This is the first step towards the full return of the Ukrainian Lavra to the Ukrainian people,” said Maxim Ostapenko, Director General of the Preserve. However, since the state began its campaign against the Lavra brotherhood and the UOC, access to the monastery and its churches has been more restricted than under Church control. Moreover, the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” now serves in the Upper Lavra, which represents a far smaller segment of the Ukrainian people.

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St. Apollonia was a holy virgin who was martyred in Alexandria in the early 3rd century. 

During a celebration of the founding of the Roman Empire, a mob began to attack Christians. According to the writings of Dionysius, the bishop of Alexandria, men seized Apollonia and broke all of her teeth. They then threatened to burn her alive outside the city if she refused to blaspheme against God or invoke the heathen gods. When she was given a little freedom, she sprang quickly into the fire and was burned to death rather than renounce her faith. 

Apollonia is the patron saint of dentists, and is invoked for toothaches, because of the torments she endured. In art, she is often represented with pincers, holding a tooth.

Istanbul, February 7, 2024

The Chora Monastery is home to perhaps the most famous icon of the Resurrection of Christ in the world. Photo: Wikipedia     

Just months after the world-famous Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul was converted back into a mosque in the First Islamic prayers in Hagia Sophia have begun, to last 24 hoursThe first Islamic prayers have already begun in the Hagia Sophai Cathedral in Istanbul, newly reconverted into a mosque by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“>summer of 2020, Turkey’s President Erdoğan Turkey conceals beauty of Chora Church in preparation for Muslim prayersFollowing the reconversion of the famous Agia Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul into a mosque in July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also ordered the reconversion of the famous Chora Church into a mosque in August.”>announced the same fate for the nearby Christ the Savior Chora Church.

The 6th-century monastery was initially converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in the 16th century. Beginning in 1945, it operated as a museum, until the decision of the Turkish Supreme Court in 2019 and Erdoğan’s decree in August 2020 that ordered it to be turned back into a mosque.

Photo: pravlife.org     

Since then, the church has been undergoing restoration work in preparation for its reopening as a mosque, which the state has announced will happen on February 23, reports Vima Orthodoxias.

The Chora Church is home to a fresco of the Resurrection of Christ known to all Orthodox Christians, as seen above.

The initial decision four years ago sparked protests from the Church and international organizations.

“It’s a fact that the conversion of Hagia Sophia and now the Monastery of Chora into mosques has hurt us,” Agia Sophia and Chora icons are “Heavenly food for the soul and an inexhaustible joy for the eyes”—Pat. Bartholomew“It is a fact that the conversion of Agia Sophia and now the Monastery of Chora into mosques has hurt us,” the Patriarch stressed.

“>Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople said at the time.

“These two unique monuments of the city were built as Christian churches. They express the universal spirit of our faith, love, and the hope of eternity. The incomparable mosaics and their other icons are Heavenly food for the soul and an inexhaustible joy for the eyes, as Photios Kontoglou from Ayvalik would say, and they belong to the world cultural heritage,” the Patriarch stressed.

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Buchhagen, Germany, February 7, 2024

Photo: GoFundMe     

After three years of building a new monastery church, the brotherhood of the Holy Trinity Bulgarian Orthodox Church in Buchhagen, Germany, is appealing for urgent support.

The monastery, which is under the Bulgarian Diocese of Western and Central Europe, needs to raise $32,270 (30,000 euros) towards materials for the roof of its church, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church reports.

Donations can be made via GoFundMe.

Photo: kirchenbau.org     

The monastery’s construction page describes the church’s architectural style:

The architecture of the Buchhagen Monastery church combines the requirements of the venerable liturgical tradition of the Holy Mount Athos with the stylistic language of the early Romanesque period, characteristic of the region (Weser Romanesque, Old Saxon, Ottonian art). Due to the relationship between this oldest German church architecture and Byzantine, Georgian, and Old Slavic church architecture, this connection is extremely harmonious. It comes very close to the Divine archetype of the “Heavenly Sanctuary.” As a result, a unique and coherent model of German-Orthodox church art, deeply rooted in Holy Tradition, emerges.

The monastery was founded in 1990 by Elder Johannes, a convert to holy Orthodoxy who then spent years in monasticism on the Holy Mountain under the elders of the Great Lavra and Elder Joseph of Vatopedi (a spiritual child of St. Joseph the Hesychast). The holy habitation follows the Athonite typikon.

Holy Trinity Monastery is also known for its own German-language musical style that combines elements of Byzantine and Gregorian chanting:

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Bancheny, Chernivtsi Province, Ukraine, February 7, 2024

Photo: YouTube     

Police in the Chernivtsi Province of Ukraine have launched an investigation into the violent attack against His Eminence Metropolitan Longin of Bancheny of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Persecuted Metropolitan Longin attacked at home, has to undergo surgery”This happened on the night of January 22, 2024. Someone knocked on the door three times, and when I opened it, I was struck and knocked unconscious.”

“>As OrthoChristian reported yesterday, His Eminence was attacked at home in late January and had to go undergo surgery on his eyes. The monastery published a photo of the Metropolitan with two very severe black eyes:

Photo: Bancheny Monastery Facebook     

A statement from Met. Longin explained that someone knocked at his door several times on the night of January 22, and when he opened the door, he was immediately struck and knocked unconscious.

And based on this statement, the police have opened investigative proceedings, the Chernivtsi Provincial police reported to Ukrainian National News.

“The police have not received any statements from Mykhailo Zhar [Met. Longin’s secular name—OC], or reports from him personally or from others about him. We have opened proceedings based on his public report,” the head of the provincial police’s communications department stated.

His Eminence commented on the attack in a video published by the monastery yesterday, assuring his flock that he is fine, and everything happens according to the allowance of God.

“According to our Orthodox faith, we must endure everything, suffer, and pray,” His Eminence said.

“I got what I deserved,” Met. Longin said humbly. “Glory to Thee, O Lord… May God forgive everyone and have mercy on everyone.”

For two years, they’ve been beating old women, stealing churches, and dividing the Ukrainian people, making the faithful of the UOC into second-class citizens, Vladyka Longin continued. But all threats against him mean nothing to the Metropolitan, because he was, is, and always will be with God, he said.

He also spoke about how the doctors at the hospital told him that most people would have died from such an attack, but the Lord saved him.

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Record rainfall in Southern California led to flooding and landslides this week, particularly in the Los Angeles area, where the local branch of Catholic Charities is soliciting donations to help with relief efforts.

After four straight days of heavy rain ended on Wednesday, some parts of the L.A. metro area, such as Bel Air, had received more than a foot of rain. Others received over half their average annual rainfall in a period of just two days.

As of late Monday, Los Angeles authorities had responded to more than 475 mudslides, with 38 homes or buildings damaged by debris flows, including four that were deemed unsafe to enter, the Los Angeles Times reported. Nine people are confirmed dead so far in the region.

Alexandria Arnold, a spokeswoman for Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, told CNA that the geographic area they serve — which includes the counties of Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara — is facing flooding and mudslides expected to be some of the “largest and most significant in our counties’ history.”

“Catholic Charities of Los Angeles has a Disaster Relief Fund that will be used to help families and individuals who are suffering from the effects of the storm, and Catholic Charities USA is sending additional funding for disaster relief,” Arnold said.

She encouraged people of goodwill to donate to the Disaster Relief Fund of Catholic Charities of Los Angeles online.

After years of serious drought, California endured an extremely wet 2023 that saw “atmospheric rivers” bring drenching rains and mudslides to parts of the state. One community affected last year was Montecito, located on the Pacific coast about 100 miles west of Los Angeles.

“Praise God, we got through the storm pretty well. No major damage here,” Father Lawrence Seyer, pastor at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Montecito, California, told CNA this week via email.

“My basement flooded. Other than that we’re doing good. I think Los Angeles had more devastation than we did up here.”

A massive mudslide in January 2018 caused by similar weather conditions killed nearly two dozen people in Montecito. Almost exactly a year ago, the entire town was ordered to evacuate because of significant flooding, mudslides, and debris flows.

During the 2023 weather event in Montecito, Seyer said he was invoking the protection of St. Margaret of Hungary, who lived in the 13th century and is considered the patron saint of floods.

Sredneuralsk, Sverdlovsk Province, Russia, February 8, 2024

Photo: blagovest-info.ru     

The Monastery of the She Who Ripens the Grain Icon of the Mother of God in Sredneuralsk has reopened, three years after it was closed amidst a controversy surrounding its founder and spiritual father, the former Schema-Igumen Sergei Romanov.

The monastery is now a dependency of the Holy Trinity-St. Seraphim Monastery in Diveyevo, reports His Eminence Metropolitan Evgeny of Ekaterinburg.

He writes:

“Well, when, when?” For several years now I’ve been hearing this question from all kinds of people. When will life resume in the Ural monastery, tragically closed three years ago? Today [February 6], the answer finally came.

With the blessing of His Holiness the Patriarch and the Holy Synod, the first service was held… A new page in the history of the monastery begins.

The sisters now face the task of establishing the daily life and the routine of monastic life… I entreat your prayers. Glory to God for all things!

The former Schema-Igumen Sergei, who founded the convent and served as its spiritual father for many years, was Ecclesiastical court defrocks Russian schema-igumen who ignored suspension and refused to leave Urals monasteryThe ecclesiastical court of the Ekaterinburg Diocese found Schema-Igumen Sergei (Romanov), founder of the Monastery of the “She Who Ripens the Grain” Icon of the Mother of God in Sredneuralsk, guilty of violating his priestly oath and monastic vows during its session today and resolved to defrock him.

“>defrocked in 2020, found guilty of violating his priestly oath and monastic vows. He had long been a controversial figure, often issuing bold, sometimes extreme statements on a number of issues. Leading up to his defrocking, he made a number of statements about the COVID pandemic, the closure of churches, and vaccines. He was also sentenced to several years in prison for inciting hatred or enmity.

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All forms of clerical abuse begin with a priest thinking he is better than others and somehow over them, Pope Francis said.

“We can live our priestly ministry well only immersed in the priestly people from whom we come,” the pope told about 1,000 priests and bishops from some 60 countries Feb. 8 during a conference on the continuing education and formation of priests.

“This belonging to the people — do not ever let us feel separate from the journey of the holy, faithful people of God — protects us, sustains us in our struggles, accompanies us in our pastoral concerns and saves us from the risk of becoming detached from reality and feeling omnipotent,” the pope said. “Watch out because this is also the root of every form of abuse.”

The conference Feb. 6-10 was sponsored by the dicasteries for Clergy, for Evangelization and for the Eastern Churches, which each have some responsibility for the training and ongoing support of priests.

Meeting participants in the Vatican audience hall, Pope Francis said the keys to a happy and healthy priesthood are holding fast to the joy of the Gospel, belonging to a people and experiencing “the generativity of service.”

“I want to express my gratitude for what you do in your dioceses and in your countries (and) for the service you carry out,” the pope said, expressing his hope that the conference would give them ideas for how to “revive the gift, rediscover the anointing, rekindle the fire so that the zeal of apostolic ministry is not extinguished” in their lives or the lives of their brother priests.

Echoing a call from the October assembly of the synod on synodality, which requested that “seminaries and other programs of priestly formation remain connected to the daily life of the community,” Pope Francis said the education of priests “should not be conceived as somehow ‘set apart.’ Rather, it should draw upon the contribution of the people of God: priests and lay faithful, men and women, celibates and married couples, the elderly and the young, without neglecting the poor and suffering who have so much to teach us.”

“Especially today, priests are called to exercise a spirit of synodality,” walking with their people, the pope said.

“Remember your roots, your history, the history of your family, and the history of your people,” he said. “A priest is not born by spontaneous generation; either he is of God’s people, or he is an aristocrat who ends up neurotic.”

A priest is called to serve, Pope Francis insisted.

“Seen in this light, formation in service is not simply the transmission of a body of teachings, but also the art of concentrating on others, bringing out all their beauty and all the good that they carry within, shedding light on their gifts but also on their shadows, their wounds and their desires,” he said.

But, the pope said, seminarians and priests also need that same kind of service, “encouraging their journey, assisting them in discernment, accompanying them in their difficulties and supporting them amid pastoral challenges.”

And, as he often does when meeting priests, Pope Francis asked them to always be merciful.

“Always forgive,” he said. “When people come to confession, they come to ask for forgiveness and not to hear a lecture on theology. Please be merciful. Always forgive, because forgiveness has this grace of embracing, of welcoming. I urge you: always forgive.”

Zambia, February 8, 2024

Photo: Metropolis of Zambia – Facebook     

Another group Baptism was celebrated recently in the Metropolis of Zambia of the Patriarchate of Alexandria.

The washing of regeneration was celebrated by Metropolitan Ioannis of Zambia on Saturday, February 3, in the outdoor baptismal font at the St. Basil Missionary Center, the Metropolis reports.

The Metropolitan addressed the newly baptized with a paternal word and welcomed to the Church founded by St. Mark the Evangelist nearly 2,000 years ago.

OrthoChristian reported on another mass Baptism at the St. Basil center in Group Baptism celebrated in ZambiaA mass Baptism was celebrated on Sunday, June 18, in the Metropolis of Zambia of the Patriarchate of Alexandria.

“>June 2023. Zambia: Orthodox church makes important donations to local prisonThe donations are made with the cooperation of the prison management, the metropolis notes.”>Last week, it was reported that a church in Zambia has been making donations to a local prison.

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The House Foreign Affairs Committee has advanced a resolution to increase sanctions and pressure on the Nigerian government over the rampant persecution of Christians and other minorities in the country.

Sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, the resolution would call on the Biden administration to designate Nigeria a “country of particular concern” (CPC), a designation that comes with additional sanctions.

The resolution would also urge the administration to appoint a special U.S. envoy to Nigeria to monitor and report on incidents of persecution.

Smith and other proponents of the bill, including Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADF), maintain that adding Nigeria to the State Department’s CPC blacklist would be an effective means to pressure the Nigerian government to address the persecution.

Sean Nelson, a legal counsel for ADF, has previously told CNA that the CPC list is “the most powerful tool the U.S. government has to influence the religious freedom situation in other countries.”

For years now Nigeria has been recognized by religious rights groups as one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a Christian. According to Open Doors International 4,998 Christians were killed in Nigeria in 2023, meaning that 82% of all Christians killed for their faith last year were in Nigeria.

In late January, Nigerian Bishop Wilfred Anagbe of the Diocese of Makurdi told CNA that the persecution amounts to a Christian “genocide” in which radical Islamic groups’ goal is to “systematically” eliminate the Christian population from Nigeria.

Despite this, the Biden administration has left Nigeria off the CPC list for the last three years. This year the administration’s decision to leave Nigeria off the list came just weeks after a series of attacks on Christmas left more than 200 Nigerian Christians dead.

Smith said in a Wednesday statement that the Nigerian government “has enabled widespread murder and violence through indifference and a gross failure to protect victims and prosecute Islamist terrorists” and that the US State Department “is not using all the tools provided to hold guilty parties accountable.”

“Following the Biden administration’s repeated failure to designate Nigeria as a country of particular concern despite widespread outcry, we are grateful to the members of Congress who are taking these vital steps to increase pressure on Nigeria for its egregious violations of religious freedom,” Nelson said in a Wednesday press release.

“No person should be persecuted for their faith, and it is imperative that the U.S. government condemn the targeted violence, unjust imprisonments, and egregious blasphemy laws that plague Christians and religious minorities in Nigeria,” he added.

Nelson told CNA that the resolution “lays out an undeniable case that Nigeria has engaged in and tolerated egregious, systematic, and ongoing violations of religious freedom, and some of the worst in the world, particularly for Christians in the north.”

If Congress passes the resolution, Nelson said he hopes the Biden administration would “listen and change course.”

“More importantly,” he said, he believes the resolution’s passage “would send an immense signal of support for the victims of persecution in Nigeria themselves, who have asked for the international community to raise their voices and would put pressure on the Nigerian government to take the persecution seriously, hold attackers accountable, and free those who have been imprisoned and charged under blasphemy-related allegations.”

“There has already been a great amount of outcry over the lack of the CPC designation for Nigeria by the USCIRF and civil society organizations that focus on international religious freedom,” he said. “Having the voice of Congress echo those concerns would also give the concerns an international amplification that is sorely needed.”

According to Nelson, the Nigerian resolution will now move forward for a vote in the House. However, no date has been set for when the vote will take place.