Tag: Christianity

Kolkata, December 12, 2024

Photo: orthodoxianewsagency.gr     

A Greek Orthodox community has been present in Kolkata since the late 17th century, and a stone church was opened in 1782. In 1923, it was decided to relocate and to another part of the city, and the new Holy Transfiguration Church was opened in November 1924.

The church has been recognized as a heritage building by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation.

On Sunday, December 8, the parish community celebrated its anniversary. That day, Metropolitan Constantine of Singapore of the Patriarchate of Singapore consecrated the church and celebrated the Divine Liturgy, reports the Orthodoxia News Agency.

At the end of the Divine Liturgy, a memorial service was held for the founders, donors, and all members of the once vibrant and numerous Greek community in Kolkata.

​

That evening, a celebratory event was held with speeches about the history and significance of the Greek church in Kolkata, and afterward, in the Church courtyard, children from charitable institutions sang Byzantine hymns and performed traditional Indian dances.

“The church functioned from 1924 to 1972 when it shut down as the Greek population declined considerably. Fr. Ignatios, a Greek priest, reopened it in 1991 and the church has been functioning since,” said church warden Raju Bharat.

Fr. Ignatios “brought in local priests and started an orphanage that currently has the only Greek in Kolkata. Sister Nektaria helps in the operation of the orphanage in Nepalgunj,” Bharat said.

Photo: orthodoxianewsagency.gr     

Fr. Rafael Maity, who currently serves at the church, holds prayers every morning in addition to the Sunday Liturgy.

The day’s events were attended by a large crowd, including political representatives of Greece and Cyprus in India, and Archimandrite Melchizedek (Galanis), abbot of the Holy Monastery of St. Nicholas Varson in Greece.

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Father Daniel Berrigan once said, “Before you get serious about Jesus, think carefully about how good you are going to look on wood!”

That’s a needed caution because Jesus warned us that if we follow him, pain will flow into our lives and we will join him on the cross.

What exactly does that mean? Is pain laid on a disciple as some kind of test? Does Jesus need his followers to feel the pains he experienced? Does God want the followers of Jesus to undergo pain to help pay the price of sin? Why does accepting to carry the cross with Jesus bring pain into our lives?

It’s interesting to note that the great mystic St. John of the Cross uses this, the inflow of pain into our lives, as a major criterion for discerning whether or not we are authentically following Jesus. For John, you know you are following Jesus when pain begins to flow into your life. Why? Does God lay special pain on those who take Christ seriously?

No. God doesn’t apportion special pain on those who take Christ seriously. The pain that flows into our lives if we take Christ seriously doesn’t come from God. It flows into us because of a deeper openness, a deeper sensitivity, and a new depth on our part. The algebra works this way: By authentically opening ourselves up to Christ we cease being overly self-protective, become more vulnerable and more sensitive, so that life, all of it, can flow into us more freely and more deeply.

And part of what now flows into us is pain: the pain of others, the pain of mother earth, the pain of our own inadequacy and lack of altruism, and the pain caused by the effect of sin everywhere. This pain will now enter us more deeply and we will feel it in a way we never did before because previously we protected ourselves against it through insensitivity and self-focus.

Happily, this has a flip side: Just as pain will now flow into our lives more freely and more deeply, so too will meaning and happiness. Once we stop protecting ourselves through self-absorption, both pain and happiness can now flow more freely and more deeply into our hearts, and we can begin to breathe out of a deeper part of ourselves.

Freud once commented that sometimes things can be best understood by examining their opposites. That’s partially the case here. The opposite of someone who opens herself to pain, who opens herself to the pain of the cross, is a person who is callous and insensitive (in slang, someone “who is thick as a plank!”). Such a person won’t feel a lot of pain — but won’t feel much of anything else either.

A number of implications flow from this.

First, God doesn’t lay pain on us when we become followers of Jesus and immerse ourselves more deeply in the mystery of Christ and the cross. The pain that ensues is intrinsic to the cross and is felt simply because we have now ceased protecting ourselves and are letting life, all of it, flow into us more freely and more deeply. Happily, the pain is more than offset by the new meaning and happiness that are now also felt.

Second, experiencing the pain that flows intrinsically from discipleship and the cross is, as John wisely puts it, one of the major criteria that separates the real Gospel from the Prosperity Gospel. When the pain of the cross flows into our lives, we know that we are not feather-bedding our own self-interest in the name of the Gospel.

Third, it’s worth it to be sensitive! Freud once said that neurosis (unhealthy anxiety) is the disease of the normal person. What he didn’t say, but might have, is that the antithesis of anxiety (healthy and unhealthy) is brute insensitivity, to be thick as a plank and thus protected from pain — but also protected from deeper meaning, love, intimacy, and community.

If you are a sensitive person (perhaps even an over-sensitive one, prone to depression and anxiety of all sorts), take consolation in that your very struggle indicates that you are not a calloused insensitive person, not a moral boor.

Finally, one of the implications of this is that heaven isn’t the same for everyone. Just as pain can be shallow or deep, so too can meaning and happiness. To the degree that we open our hearts to depth, to that same degree deep meaning and happiness can flow into us. A closed heart makes for shallow meaning. A heart partially open makes for some deep meaning, but not full meaning. Whereas the heart that is fully open makes for the deepest meaning.

There are different depths to meaning and happiness here on earth and, I suspect, that will be true too in the next life. So, the invitation from Jesus is to accept the pain that comes from the wood of the cross rather than being thick as a plank!

Photo: vitvet.com     

An ancient law in the Old Testament is assuming new significance in today’s increasingly secular culture. It is this: “You shall not move your neighbour’s boundary marker which the ancestors have set” (Deuteronomy 19:14). The law was important enough to bear repetition: in the series of curses brought upon Israel for covenant violation in Deuteronomy 27 we find “Cursed is the he who moves his neighbour’s boundary marker” and Proverbs 22:28 also bids the wise man “Do not move the ancient boundary which your fathers have set”.

In its original context this law had to do with land theft: the boundary marker delineated the extent of one’s land and so moving it backwards or forwards thereby affected how much land one owned. If I moved my neighbour’s boundary marker back towards him by half a mile I thereby acquired half a mile of his land. In God’s covenant with Israel wherein the land was sacred and ultimately belonged to Yahweh as His gift or loan to His people, such theft also involved a kind of sacrilege. No wonder such land theft was singled out for a divine curse.

Boundaries are important things. A world without boundaries is a world without order, a world in chaos. Boundaries determine everything in our world—things as arbitrary as which side of the road to drive on (to avoid traffic chaos and injury) to things as basic and natural as who one can marry and create family with. May a man marry anyone he desires and as many times as he wants so that he has 70 wives? May he marry his sister? His daughter? His son? An ordered world produces marital boundaries and determines who a man may marry and how many wives he may have at one time.

It is not so with animals. Animals do not need boundaries or laws; they are subject only to instinct and the harsh realities of nature red in tooth and claw. Boundaries and laws are peculiar to man (and, I suppose, to angels).

We see such boundaries being established in the ”In the Beginning:” The First Day of CreationGod is humble so we should be humble, and you can read the Scriptures as being entirely this story—God can do anything, and without Him we can do nothing. If God can create out of nothing He is infinitely greater than us. It’s essential for us to find in every verse and in every moment of life ways to become humble. We hear these verses all the time and it’s so easy to read one verse and pass onto the next, but if we can stop and think about what it’s really saying about God and ourselves in comparison to God, it will help us to find our humility which is an essential beginning point to the spiritual life.

“>first creation story of Genesis 1:1-2:3. At the beginning, before creation, there were no boundaries or limits. All was in chaos, in a state of uselessness and unproductivity—in Hebrew, tohu and bohu (often rendered “without form and void”). Or in the words of the Genesis narrator, everything was sea. (The notion of everything being sea prior to creation was present in Egyptian and Babylonian cosmologies as well.) Moreover, darkness lay over the face of the deep and the sea water so that all was useless.

But the Spirit of God, moving over the face of the sea, brought order out of the chaos. That is, God established boundaries and limits. God said, “Let there be light” and thereby created daylight, separating it from the primeval darkness, calling the daylight “day” and the darkness from which the day was separated, “night” (Genesis 1:3-5).

Then He created a boundary between some of the water and the rest of the water: He said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters” (verse 6). This separator pushed some of the sea water up, separating from the sea water still down here, and He called this separator “heaven” or “sky”. (We note in passing that the ancients believed that there was a heavenly ocean above the sky and it was from this ocean that the rain came and that this sky was solid—see Job 37:18—but discussion of this is for another post. For now we simply note that creation involved separation and setting a boundary.)

Then God separated some of sea water still down here so that dry land could appear, calling the dry land “earth” and calling the water “seas” (verse 9-10). Again: creation involved separation and boundaries.

These boundaries continued to be in place and it was them that kept order in the world. Thus we read in Job 38:8f how God continues to maintain the boundary between the seas and the earth so that the seas do not flood the earth and undo the original work of creation. In that passage God asks Righteous Job: Pre-covenantal Priest, Prophet, and KingIf Job, who had neither the Law nor the grace of the Spirit within the Church, could endure such a horrid trial, how much more are we given to endure the onslaught of the devil and his demons? If we remain steadfast in our faith in God no matter what comes our way, we will all be God’s priests, prophets, and kings—we will all be like Job.

“>Job rhetorically, “Who enclosed the sea with doors when I made a cloud its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and placed boundaries on it and set a bolt and doors and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, but no farther and here shall your proud waves stop?’” The boundaries between the seas—both the heavenly sea and the earthly one—were necessary for the maintenance of life on earth. (We find echoes of this in the Orthodox prayer sanctifying the baptismal font and celebrating God’s power: “You have set around the sea barriers of sand”.)

We see what happens when this boundary between the waters is removed—in Genesis 7:11 we read that fountains of the great deep burst open and the windows of the sky were opened and the result was the return of pre-creation chaos, the great flood that inundated and drowned the world.   Boundaries are what keep the world in life; their removal brings universal death.

Today we find almost every boundary being deliberately transgressed, repudiated, set aside, broken down, and discarded, with a consequent break down of order in the world. We can name but a few of these moved, altered, and broken boundaries: the boundary between man and woman is broken down through our legitimation of homosexuality and further destroyed in our acceptance of transgenderism. The boundary between the single and married state is transgressed through our normalization of sexual promiscuity. The boundary between human and animal life is erased when we accept that the unborn may be killed as guiltlessly as we kill kittens. The boundaries created by family are eroded when we sunder sexuality and birth-giving from child-rearing, allowing outsiders to provide sperm and womb in the creation of life within our family. The boundary between men and women and between clerical and lay is violated through the ordination of women to the sacred ministry. The boundary between truth and falsehood is discarded when we ecumenically declare that all religions are equally-valuable and equally true. We have even begun to transgress the boundary between man and machine as we flirt with trans-humanism.

What is clear is that all this moving of the ancient and divinely-set boundaries constitute the return of chaos to our world. The moving and discarding of the boundaries in western culture has been taking place slowly and incrementally over the past seventy years and so the return of chaos is also a correspondingly slow process. But the chaos is unmistakable. The failing pulse of life in the West can be gauged in many ways; here I mention only one: the rise of teen depression and teen suicide.

Teens in the West have arguably been better off than any previous generation. They do not suffer the ravages of war, famine, or grinding poverty. The Black Death has not swept our land or decimated its population. Our young people are safe, well-fed, pampered, and provided with every technological advance and comfort. Yet depression and suicide rates continue to climb. What does this mean?—that chaos is returning.

We see this transgression of boundaries illustrated in the story of the sons of God in Genesis 6:1-2. In that passage we read, “Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.”

This little vignette has stirred much controversy and resulted in gallons of spilled exegetical ink—and hours of online podcasts. Here I will only say that the “sons of God”, as in Job 38:7, are the angels and that the story narrates how some of the angels lusted after human women and took them as their wives, the result being the Who are the nephilim?Thus we hear of the appearance of the “Nephilim” in that mysterious, ancient age before the Flood. Most of the time, that word “Nephilim” is translated as the English word “giants.” But “giant” does not come close to the full meaning of the term. “Nephil” carries the meaning of “superiority,” “great and powerful,” and also “violent.”

“>Nephilim, or giants as their offspring (verse 4). In other words, the sons of God violated a boundary, the line between angels and human beings, and the result was a race of unnatural offspring. The result also was the flood, for the story of the breaching of the angelic-human boundary introduces the story of the flood, in which the boundaries between the heavenly sea and the earth was also breached. One boundary-breaking produced the other.

We see that this story of the sinning sons of God is a tale of boundary violation by how it is described in Jude 6: they were “angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper habitation”. The word here rendered “habitation” is the Greek οἰκητήριον/ oiketerion, the word used in 2 Maccabees 11:2 to mean “home”. The angels’ proper home was in heaven; making a home on earth constituted a violation of the created order, a moving and discarding the boundary between angels and human beings.

Our culture here in the West is characterized by such boundary violation and removal of the distinct and separate categories created by God. In other words, our present culture is transgressive at its core. We are currently reaping the reward of such transgressions. As Christians it is imperative that we keep such boundary transgressions outside of the Church, for if we do not the chaos afflicting the world will enter the Church as well.

Every Liturgy the deacon cries out, “The doors! The doors!”—the original directive to the door-keepers to guard the doors, barring the Eucharist from invasion by hostile outsiders. The directive may now also serve to remind us to bar the Church from invasion by those who want to remove the ancient boundary markers. Those markers were set by God to create and maintain life and order. We move or discard them at our peril.

The incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump plans to rescind a long-standing policy preventing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making arrests at what are seen as sensitive locations, including houses of worship, schools and hospitals, according to a report by NBC News.

Trump, who has pledged to carry out “the largest deportation program in American history,” plans to scrap the longstanding ICE policy — which prohibits immigration enforcement arrests at such locations, as well as other sensitive events like weddings and funerals without approval from supervisors — as soon as the first day he is in office, according to the report’s sources.

The Trump-Vance transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from OSV News about the report.

Hardline immigration policies, including his call for mass deportations, were a core tenant of the platform Trump campaigned on. Since his election, Trump has also indicated his willingness to involve the military to carry out a mass deportation program.

While Trump has not yet offered specifics on how he would carry out such a program, mass deportations more broadly run contrary to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching in “Gaudium et Spes” condemning “deportation” among other actions, such as abortion, that “poison human society” and are “supreme dishonor to the Creator,” a teaching St. John Paul II affirmed in two encyclicals on moral truth and life issues.

Catholic immigration advocates raised alarm at the proposal.

“It is clear that local parishes and pastors will need to be prepared for enforcement activity both near and on church property, and should at least require that ICE agents have a warrant before entering a church,” J. Kevin Appleby, senior fellow for policy at The Center for Migration Studies of New York and the former director of migration policy for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told OSV News.

“This certainly is an infringement on religious freedom and will deter immigrant families from attending Mass and receiving the sacraments,” Appleby said. “The U.S. bishops should be very concerned about this deportation scheme and push back against it strongly, as it is as much an attack on the life of the church in this country as it is against immigrant families.”

Anna Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, also known as CLINIC, said the group “is deeply concerned about any changes that would undermine the safety and well-being of immigrants and their families. Sensitive locations — such as houses of worship, schools, and hospitals — are sanctuaries where individuals seek solace, education, and critical care without fear of intimidation or detention.”

“This policy has long recognized the importance of these spaces for fostering trust and community stability,” Gallagher said. “Rescinding it would not only disrupt families and communities but could also deter individuals from accessing essential services, such as education and healthcare, or practicing their faith freely.”

Gallagher noted Pope Francis has consistently emphasized the inherent dignity of each and every human person.

“CLINIC upholds this message of inherent human dignity and urges leaders to consider the profound consequences of such a decision,” Gallagher said. “We call for the preservation of protections at sensitive locations to ensure immigrants and their families can live without fear and fulfill their basic needs, including the practice of religion.”

Chieko Noguchi, a spokesperson for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the U.S. bishops “remain committed both to following the law and assisting in humane solutions to the challenges in our immigration system.”

“We are aware of the various proposals being discussed with regards to immigration, and are preparing to deal with a range of policies, and will engage appropriately when public policies are put forth by the office holders,” she said.

Moscow, December 9, 2024

pravoslavie.ru   

By order of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, work has begun on collecting materials towards the possible canonization of Schema-Archimandrite Zosima (Sokur)Zosima (Sokur), Schema-Archimandrite

“>Schema-Archimandrite Zosima (Sokur), a beloved elder in Donbass who reposed in 2002.

The news was announced at Moscow presentation of the new book by Vladimir Karagodin, Holy Rus’ Will Win!: Donetsk Elder Zosima, reports TASS.

Elder Zosima is known for stressing the importance of the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches.

The head of the Donetsk People’s Republic representative office in Moscow, Olga Makeeva, noted that Elder Zosima played “the greatest role” in the life of the Donbass. According to her, 12 years after the Elder’s death, difficult times came to Ukraine, which he had long warned about. In 2014, there was a coup in Kiev, and “power passed into the hands of puppets of the satanic West.”

“Russophobic hysteria destroyed everything connected with Russia and its great history in its path. But the Donbass didn’t accept the coup, didn’t accept the illegal authority, for which it was declared a terrorist, and military aviation, armored vehicles, and artillery were thrown at its suppression. The Donbass stood tall to protect its homeland, the memory of its ancestors, and the Orthodox faith. And among the defenders were Father Zosima’s parishioners who had grown up, who stood up to defend Russian land, as the Elder had bequeathed them,” said Makeeva.

***

Elder Zosima was born on September 3, 1944, in the village of Kosolmanka, Sverdlovsk Province. His mother was arrested for communicating with nuns and gave birth to him in the prison hospital. He was named in honor of St. John the Baptist on the counsel of St. Kuskha of Odessa. His father died in the war the year he was born.

From 1961 to 1964, he studied at an agricultural college then briefly worked as a veterinarian. Then he received a blessing to become a novice at the Kiev Caves Lavra. There, he lived in the cell where St. Kuksha of Odessa lived until his repose.

From 1968 to 1975, he studied at the Leningrad Theological Seminary, graduating with a PhD in theology. In 1975, he was tonsured a monk with the name Savvaty. Upon graduating, he was sent to the Holy Dormition Monastery in Odessa. He soon transferred to the Donetsk Diocese to be able to take care of his ailing mother. There, he worked to rebuilt the building and community of the Church of St. Alexander Nevsky in the village of Alexandrovka.

In the 1980s, the Soviet authorities began to take note of the zealous priest. He was threatened and beaten, after which his health deteriorated sharply. Under pressure from the KGB, he was transferred from one parish to another. Wherever he went, he labored intensely to rebuild churches and bring the people back to holy Orthodoxy.

In 1990, he was elevated to the rank of archimandrite, and in 1992, he was tonsured into the schema with the name Zosima.

In 1998, he founded the Holy Dormition Monastery of Sts. Nicholas and Basil the Great in the village of Nikolskoye, Donetsk.

On February 1, 1998, he was appointed confessor of the Donetsk Diocese.

Elder Zosima reposed in the Lord on August 29, 2002. He was buried on the territory of the monastery.

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Belgrade, December 11, 2024

Photo: spc.rs     

The Serbian capital needs dozens more churches, says the primate of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

His Holiness Patriarch Porfirije of Serbia addressed the issue during the recent consecration of bells at the Church of St. John Vladimir in Belgrade’s Medaković District.

“According to European standards, Belgrade needs at least 100 churches,” he said, adding that he believes other Belgrade residents, like himself, feel heartache when seeing some people protest and object to initiatives to build churches according to the needs of the faithful.

This statement has brought attention to the gap between the city’s urban development and the spiritual needs of Belgrade’s residents, reports the Serbian Orthodox Church.

According to data from several years ago, Belgrade has 62 religious buildings, including a mosque and a synagogue, with several Orthodox churches under construction.

“To understand the real need for planning new Orthodox churches in Belgrade, we need to look at the mismatch between planning and city development over the last 80 years,” says Deacon Miroslav D. Nikolić, architect of the Belgrade-Karlovci Archdiocese.

In the capital before World War II, in 1939, external construction work on the Church of St. Mark was completed. Due to war events, work was interrupted, and this church was only completed and consecrated in 1948.

Under communist rule, no Orthodox churches were built in Belgrade for the next 40 years. The first one built after World War II was the Church of the Synaxis of Serbian Saints in Karaburma, consecrated on November 13, 1988, which even then was sized more like a village church. Only a decade later, on May 31, 1998, the second post-war church was built and consecrated, dedicated to St. John Vladimir in the Medaković District. At that time, Patriarch Pavle was on the throne of the Serbian Orthodox Church, during whose time construction began on 29 churches, many of which were completed.

“In those five decades, many smaller suburban settlements grew into large municipalities,” says Dcn. Nikolić, but the city’s urban development and planning projects didn’t keep pace with the population’s needs for Orthodox church construction. The planned positioning of schools, shops, markets, and other infrastructure didn’t recognize people’s spiritual needs.

According to current urban planning standards, which dictate optimal distances for public facilities in settlements, a radius of .5 miles or 10-15 minutes walking distance is considered the optimal range for citizen access. These conditions also dictate the need for planning new locations for church construction.

Dcn. Nikolić emphasized that most new churches were built in Belgrade’s suburbs, so residents of many urban Belgrade neighborhoods still live several miles away from the nearest church.

The Russian Orthodox Church has the same goal for its population centers. In Moscow in particular, more than 12 dozen churches have been built More than 200 churches currently under construction in MoscowSince the start of the 200 churches program in 2010, more than twelve dozen churches have been built in Moscow, and another 200 are currently under construction.

“>since 2010, with another 200 under construction.

The aim is to ensure every resident of Moscow has a church within walking distance.

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For Latin American Catholics, December is an important month, not just in anticipation of the Christmas celebrations, but also for important Marian feast days, such as Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Immaculate Conception, that remain linked to their cultural history.

In Nicaragua, however, the days of public celebrations, processions and outward expressions of faith are fast becoming a distant memory, as the Sandinista regime of President Daniel Ortega continues its brutal persecution of the Catholic Church.

Ortega’s crackdown on the Catholic Church began in April 2018, after deadly protests against his government’s proposed reforms which led to calls for his ouster. Hundreds were killed in repressions by police and paramilitaries while demonstrators fleeing the violence sought refuge in churches.

Despite criticism of the overhaul coming from business leaders, university students and elderly pensioners, the president publicly blamed right-wing groups and the Catholic Church for inciting violence.

According to The Associated Press, Ortega, who rules the country with his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, accused the church of plotting a coup and labeled the country’s priests as “terrorists.”

Since then, the regime’s suppression of the church has only increased in its ferocity, with 2024 being a constant spin of persecution, with the arrest or expulsion of Catholic bishops, clergy, religious and lay men and women, and the shuttering of Catholic humanitarian organizations.

In January, Vatican News confirmed that Bishop Rolando Álvarez of Matagalpa, Bishop Isidoro Mora of Siuna and over a dozen priests were released after the Nicaraguan government reached an agreement with the Vatican to negotiate their release and exile.

An outspoken critic of the Ortega regime, Bishop Álvarez was arrested in August 2022 during a raid on his diocesan curia office and held in custody for more than 500 days. He was charged with conspiracy and spreading false information and sentenced to 26 years in prison.

Prior to his release, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, or USCIRF, condemned the Nicaraguan government’s arrest and imprisonment of Bishop Álvarez, as well as its detainment of priests and bishops who publicly criticized the government or expressed support for the imprisoned bishop.

The commission continues to monitor the situation in Nicaragua, and for USCIRF Commissioner Maureen Ferguson, the increasing attacks not only against the Catholic Church but other Christian denominations, including the evangelical and Moravian churches, is alarming.

In March 2024, authorities convicted 13 members, including 11 pastors, belonging to Mountain Gateway, a Texas-based Christian organization focused on evangelism, primarily in Nicaragua.

The group was found guilty of money laundering and organized crime in a sham trial and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. However, after significant diplomatic pressure, U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken announced Sept. 5 that the United States secured the release of 135 political prisoners, including the members of Mountain Gateway.

“I think the trajectory has worried me the most because this has grown into a full-scale crackdown on the rights of the people of Nicaragua to practice their faith,” Ferguson told OSV News Dec. 9.

“We know this is a largely Catholic country and we know that their faith is precious to them, and it is imbued in the culture so deeply and so beautifully,” she added.

The Ortega regime increased its attacks against the church in April when it prohibited public exhibitions of faith, especially processions during Holy Week.

Ferguson told OSV News that the Ortega regime has continued to suppress public processions, which “are now replaced with sort of a secular carnival.”

Furthermore, she noted, girls and young women are suffering the consequences of the repression as they are often exploited at those government-sanctioned carnivals.

“Girls used to be brought up in the beauty of looking up to the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception,” Ferguson said. “Now, it’s a whole different story with these sort of secular carnivals” that have replaced Marian processions, including the feasts of Our Lady of Fatima and Our Lady of the Rosary.

“The chilling effect on the expression of faith is in itself shocking really. So, I would say what’s most concerning to me is the trajectory; that it’s only growing into more and more of a full blown crisis,” she said.

Over the summer, Nicaraguan authorities also targeted over a dozen Catholic media outlets in the country for closure, including Radio Maria, further limiting Catholics unable to attend Mass after priests were arrested, forced into exile or fled the country.

Religious congregations and nongovernmental organizations, as well as Catholic schools and universities, also had their legal status revoked and forced to shutter operations in the country, including the Missionaries of Charity.

Like the banning of religious processions, the expulsion of the Missionaries of Charity was also detrimental for young girls, Ferguson told OSV News.

The sisters “ran a home for teenage girls. They took in girls off the street who were being exploited” and “they cared for these girls. With them gone, who’s caring for the girls? Nobody! They’re being exploited again,” she said.

Elderly people and the poor, also cared for by the Missionaries of Charity, have also been left on the wayside after the sisters were expelled.

In August, the Ortega regime also revoked the legal status of Caritas, the Catholic Church’s charitable arm, in the Diocese of Matagalpa, the diocese of the now-exiled Bishop Álvarez. That same month, it revoked the legal status of religious orders, including the Franciscans, the Augustinians and the Carmelites, as well as lay Catholic groups in the country.

“Who’s caring for the elderly, the poor? Not the government! You have these beautiful, saintly nuns caring for them and they’ve been exiled and kicked out. So, the people of Nicaragua are suffering on a material level, from lack of care on a human level, from lack of care on a spiritual level, for having the expression of their faith suppressed. It’s just tragic on every level,” Ferguson said.

In November, the regime expelled another bishop: Bishop Carlos Enrique Herrera of Jinotega, president of the Nicaraguan bishops’ conference.

Bishop Herrera was forced to leave the country after he accused a local Sandinista mayor of sacrilege for blaring loud music outside of the cathedral while he was praying during a Nov. 10 Mass.

“We ask the Lord’s forgiveness for our faults and also for those who do not respect worship and truth,” as “this is a sacrilege that the mayor and the municipal authorities are committing. … Go tell them because they know the time of the Mass,” he said during the Mass which was broadcast on the diocesan Facebook page.

Faced with the continued persecution of the Catholic Church and the exile of over 200 religious leaders and clergy members, as well as four bishops, Pope Francis addressed Nicaraguans in a letter released Dec. 2 by the Vatican.

Avoiding any direct criticism of the Ortega regime or the persecution of Catholics in the country, the pope called on Nicaraguans to not lose hope and to “be certain that faith and hope work miracles.”

Ferguson said that while there are some who hope to hear more from Pope Francis on the suffering of the Nicaraguan people, she thought the pope’s letter was “very beautiful” and believed that “people found it very heartening.”

While the Ortega regime continues to show no signs of ending his persecution, Ferguson told OSV News she was hopeful that significant pressure, especially from the United States, will help those suffering in the country.

“We have seen the regime respond to pressure with the example of the Mount Gateway pastors,” she said, expressing her hope that in the coming year, the new administration will continue to show “effective leadership on this issue.”

The commission, she added, will continue to push for a “muscular response from our government” and “to do more in the way of imposing targeted sanctions, visa bans on Nicaraguan government officials and agencies; on the people responsible for these attacks on houses of worship.”

“At the commission, we just continue to try to shine a spotlight on this and advocate for a more robust government response,” Ferguson said.

Incheon, South Korea, December 11, 2024

Photo: churchkr.com     

A new parish of the Korean diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church held its first Divine Liturgy over the weekend.

The new Church of All Saints is located in Incheon, South Korea’s third most populous city. The Divine Liturgy was celebrated by His Eminence Archbishop Theophan of Korea on Sunday, December 8, the diocese reports.

This is now the fifth parish in the Korean Diocese.

The service was attended by Orthodox believers living in Incheon and the nearby cities of Ansan, Gimpo, and Bucheon, at whose request the parish was opened.

Photo: churchkr.com     

After the decision to open the parish was made, the parishioners quickly found a space for services, installed a temporary iconostasis, and purchased the necessary Church utensils. The space for services has been rented in Incheon’s Russian-speaking district, where a significant number of people from CIS countries reside.

Before the start of the Liturgy, a moleben with the blessing of water was served, after which the walls of the church space were sprinkled with holy water.

His Eminence was assisted by Hierodeacon Nectary (Lim), and most of the faithful received Holy Communion.

After the Liturgy, the Archbishop delivered a sermon and thanked everyone for their help in opening and setting up the new parish.

South Korea: Monastery established by Russian Orthodox ChurchOn January 18, on the eve of the feast of Theophany, a new missionary monastery of the Korean Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church began in Incheon, South Korea.

“>In January of this year, a monastery was established in the Korean Diocese, also in Incheon. A collection of liturgical texts was published in Church Slavonic and Korean Orthodox liturgical texts in Korean and Russian publishedPublication was made possible through the assistance of the Foundation for the Support of Christian Culture and Heritage.”>in June of this year.

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The Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) has called on the European Union (EU) to appoint a coordinator for the fight against anti-Christian hatred in the same way it already employs coordinators to combat hate directed against Jews and Muslims.

“The time is mature for the appointment of an EU coordinator on combating anti-Christian hatred in Europe,” said Alessandro Calcagno, an adviser to the bishops on fundamental rights, during his speech at the European Prayer Breakfast held at the European Parliament last week.

“It is not a question of victimism but equal access to tools of protection,” Calcagno said.

COMECE is the body that officially represents the Catholic Church to the EU.

Calcagno explained that the right to freedom of religion, as well as provisions to fight against discrimination on the grounds of religion, should not be seen only through the prism of protecting faith communities that are religious minorities.

“It is necessary to break the ‘majorities vs. minorities’ dynamic that underpins the approach of certain actors and policymakers,” Calcagno stated.

Appointing a coordinator is one of the priorities that Calcagno, on behalf of the European bishops, outlined in relation to the exercise of religious freedom in the EU, among which is “need to ensure equal protection to all dimensions of this core fundamental right, including the institutional one,” he highlighted.

“Too often, freedom of religion is depicted as a ‘problematic’ right, and its collective dimension, compared with its individual dimension, is neglected,” the adviser said.

The need to protect places of worship and data of a religious nature as well as better integrate the defense of religious freedom into EU policies was also addressed during the event.

The European Prayer Breakfast, attended by some 450 participants from across the continent and beyond, was held in conjunction with a panel focused on current trends of rising religious intolerance in Europe.

U.S.A., December 11, 2024

YouTube screenshot     

A new documentary, “The History of Early Christian Icons,” was published last week by harmony, an Orthodox Christian production studio.

The video explores the historical development of early Christian art, tracing its origins from Jewish religious practices and symbols to its evolution into distinct Christian iconography. Beginning with the Ark of the Covenant as a “proto-icon,” it shows how early Jewish understanding of religious symbols and objects laid the foundation for Christian artistic expression. Early Christians adapted both Jewish symbolic traditions and pagan art forms, creating a unique artistic language that combined symbolic representation with growing elements of realism, particularly after Christ’s Incarnation made the Divine visible in human form.

This artistic development reached a crucial phase after Christianity’s legalization under St. Constantine, when a distinctive style emerged that balanced realistic portrayal with symbolic elements (such as halos and specific postures) to convey theological truths. Throughout this evolution, Christian art maintained its primary purpose as a vehicle for worship and veneration, rather than mere decoration.

The video concludes by contrasting this traditional iconographic understanding, still preserved in Orthodox Christianity, with later Western Christian approaches to religious art that departed from these original theological and artistic principles. Throughout, the narrative emphasizes that early Christian art was not merely aesthetic but served as a crucial bridge between the earthly and Divine realms, fostering active participation in worship.

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The documentary was written by Craig Truglia of the Orthodox Christian Theology YouTube channel, and directed by Jose de Oliveira, with Fr. Stephen Bigham, a specialist in the theology of Christian art and icons, serving as subject matter advisor.

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