World

The pontiff, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, has been battling respiratory problems all winter.

'Usually people are joyful today and kids are excited. But when you compare children here who have water and food and a family to what’s happening in Gaza, how can you be happy?' said Fayaz Dakkak, a Palestinian storeowner.

‘We repent of the ways we have not stood alongside our Palestinian siblings in faithful witness in the midst of their grief, agony, and sorrow,’ the leaders wrote.

Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, led the memorial service.

The commitment falls short of demands from some campaigners for institutions that benefited from slavery to pay compensation to descendants of the enslaved.

The militants 'are terrorists, and they are not fighting for any religion. But they want to use religion to achieve their target of destabilizing the country and establishing an Islamic state,' said a local evangelical Christian pastor.

The pro-Kremlin Lukashenko last month signed into law a measure requiring all religious organizations in the country to reregister with authorities or face being outlawed if their loyalty to the state is in doubt.

This issue of A Public Witness explores the subversive power of public mourning — like what happened recently after the state murder of Russian political dissident Alexei Navalny — to better understand a Beatitude of Jesus.

Judges across Europe are having a tough time deciding whether asylum-seekers claiming religious persecution are ‘genuine’ Christians.

Eastern Orthodox leadership, despite lacking a single doctrinal authority like a pope, has been united in opposing recognition of same-sex relationships both within its own rites and in the civil realm.