An estimated 340 million Christians worldwide face persecution for their beliefs, according to data from Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). Christians are increasingly getting that message, but ACN officials are concerned that people might become numb to that magnitude.
In attempting to solve any problem, one might face two very different challenges. The first is when almost no one else even recognizes there is a problem, and, when they’re told, they remain skeptical. The other is when people know there’s a problem, but don’t quite understand its scope and details.
From his experience in Iraq in 2018, Monsignor Kieran Harrington doesn’t look at one stop, or moment, from Pope Francis’ trip to Iraq as most significant. Rather, it’s the fact that the Holy Father was there in the first place.
Chalk up something else affected by the coronavirus: fundraising for Catholic entities of all kinds.
In his last Angelus, Pope Francis invited children to participate together in a very special initiative. He spoke to the crowd gathered outside of St. Peter’s Square, asking that children all over the world pray the rosary together on Sunday morning, Oct. 18.
Nearly two years after her release from prison, and as another Christian man has been sentenced to death in Pakistan, Asia Bibi is calling for the country’s strict blasphemy laws to be changed in order to allow better protection for minorities.
With the defeat of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq, the Iraqi prime minister has called on Christians to return home to Iraq. Mustafa Al-Kazemi said, in a statement issued by the government, that Iraq was “serious about providing assistance to our Christian families and solving their problems.”
As Lebanon’s Catholic leaders appealed for help for their country, international and U.S. organizations appealed for donations for Beirut, capital of a country already suffering from a severe economic downturn.
A badly damaged Catholic Cathedral has resurrected after at least three missile attacks amid the Syrian civil war. The Maronite Cathedral of St. Elijah in Aleppo reopened July 20 following years of restoration when the church was bombed by jihadists in 2013.
A new study has found that while a majority of U.S. Catholics are concerned about the global persecution of Christians, there has been a noticeable decline of concern in the past two years.
