World

“It was a personally moving experience,” said Amy Brown after visiting the house where her great uncle spent 36 years as a general surgeon in Jordan. Amy, married to the secretary general of Baptist World Alliance Elijah Brown, visited just one month after the passing of the elder Lovegren, who would have been 101 years old on Dec. 11.

After fleeing violence in their Guatemalan town, but with their way to relatives in California blocked by continuing U.S. asylum restrictions, a family of 15 joined an Advent candlelight ceremony organized by their shelter just south of the border.

Tucked away in the hills north of Beirut below a Maronite monastery, Lebanon’s only remaining Christian-majority Palestinian camp gives few outward clues to its identity.

Churches have joined in Germany’s efforts to save on heating costs this winter, forcing their congregations into ever more layers of clothing. But at the same time, they are providing warm spaces for the homeless and for people who are struggling to pay their bills.

The fifth meeting of Phase III of the international dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and the Catholic Church took place Dec. 12-16, 2022, in Rome, Italy, hosted by the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity.

Christmas is normally peak season for tourism in Bethlehem, located in the Israeli-occupied West Bank just a few miles southeast of Jerusalem. In pre-pandemic times, thousands of pilgrims and tourists from around the world came to celebrate.

Pope Francis called Wednesday for a “humble” Christmas this year, with savings from reduced spending on gifts donated to help the “suffering people of Ukraine.” Francis called for “concrete gestures” of charity for Ukrainians this holiday season during his weekly general audience.

Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Rosary sits in a “religious complex” housing other Christian denominations. And at this church in Qatar, the small Gulf emirate hosting the World Cup, there are some tweaks to tradition.

Ukraine banned the activities of religious organizations “affiliated with centers of influence” in Russia and said it would examine the links between the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree imposing personal sanctions against representatives of religious organizations associated with Russia.

The Biden administration on Friday placed a well-known Russian paramilitary organization on a list of religious freedom violators alongside a number of notorious terrorist organizations. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced he had designated the Wagner Group as an “entity of particular concern” for its activities in the Central African Republic.