World

Wearing hard hats and protective suits, members of the choir of Notre Dame Cathedral sang inside the medieval Paris landmark for the first time since last year’s devastating fire for a special Christmas Eve concert.

After focusing on COVID-19 for nearly a year, international aid groups are bracing for what happens as the world comes out of lockdown. With declining numbers of volunteers and donors, global faith-based aid organizations are looking beyond their traditional sources of support.

Like most Holy Land Christians, Hagop Karakashian’s ceramic shop in the Old City here has always relied heavily on the presence of Christian pilgrims, especially in December. But the narrow alleyways of his shop’s ancient neighborhood are painfully empty this year.

A six-week war in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region in the South Caucasus, ended on Nov. 9. But the rich architectural heritage of the region is still at risk as historic Armenian churches, monasteries, and tombstones may face damage or destruction now that they are out of Armenian hands.

The Palestinian prime minister on Thursday (Dec. 17) announced a two-week lockdown in the West Bank that appears certain to curtail Christmas celebrations in the town of Jesus’s birth. 

The U.S. State Department has added Nigeria to its list of countries deemed to have the most egregious violations of religious freedom. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom hailed the State Department’s decisions.

Pope Francis says the Christmas season provides reason for hope amid the difficulties of the coronavirus pandemic. During his Sunday blessing, Francis noted that the Vatican’s Christmas tree had gone up last week in St. Peter’s Square, and that work is underway to build the life-size Nativity scene next to it.

Only a few dozen people attended the lighting of the Christmas tree in the biblical city of Bethlehem on Saturday (Dec. 5), as coronavirus restrictions scaled back the annual event that is normally attended by thousands.

The coronavirus has cast a pall over Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem, all but shutting down the biblical town revered as Jesus’s birthplace at the height of the normally cheery holiday season.

As a church planter and missionary in Croatia, Eric Maroney looks for new strategies to share the Gospel. When a Brazilian ministry partner pitched the idea of a radio ministry, Maroney saw it as a part of a larger strategy to spread the Gospel and connect seekers with local congregations.