After describing the dramatic situation the Aleppines are living through, the bishop addressed the journalists who had come to hear him.
“Wake up! The cancer is at your door. They will destroy you. We, the Christians of the Middle East are the only group that has seen the face of evil: Islam”.
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| Christian refugees in a Chaldean Catholic church in Erbil |
The Chaldean Patriarch of Baghdad Raphael Louis Sako calls on Iraqi Christians to fast on Christmas Eve in order to implore the Lord for the return of refugees in Mosul and the Nineveh plains. At the same time, he asks the faithful not to organise "any worldly celebration" for Christmas and New Year as "a sign of solidarity with their displaced brothers and sisters, who are going through indescribable suffering."...For this reason, he urges them to fast from Monday 22 December until night on 24 December, not touching food or drink until noon, as "in the days of Ba'utha". The Fast of Ba'utha commemorates what the prophet Jonah brought to the people of Nineveh for their conversion.
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| Cross being removed from the Armenian Church in Raqqa, Syria, 2013 |
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| Church in Aleppo, Syria, destroyed in 2012 |
ALEPPO, Syria — Walking through the largely Christian neighborhoods of Aleppo city — Azizieh, Siryan, Sulaimaniyah and Midan — you can still see the posters of the two bishops kidnapped by Islamist militants last year hanging on shop windows, walls and even cars. The people here haven’t forgotten them; the event is still as painful and fresh as if it had happened just yesterday. The bishops’ kidnapping was a symbolic event, indicative of the larger collapse of interfaith communal relations in a country under the strain of a sectarian civil war, and marked the end of a long era of relative peace and safety for the Christians of Syria....Fear is palpable in this city; it hangs heavy in the air everywhere you go, like a potent and nauseous perfume. You can see it in people's eyes, in the deep lines on their faces; you can hear it in the way they talk; it’s in their conversations, it’s all they ever talk about.But fear of a new kind permeates this ancient and deeply rooted community. Genocide and ethnic cleansing are very real threats that haunt the collective conscience of Syria’s Christians.
God will not except any man's person, neither will he stand in awe of any man's greatness: for he made the little and the great, and he hath equally care of all. But a greater punishment is ready for the more mighty.
(Wisdom, 6:7-9)
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| In solidarity with our Persecuted Brethren in Iraq and Syria |
3:00 AM Low Mass from Fribourg, Switzerland followed by Holy Hour9:00 AM Low Mass from Sarasota, Florida12:30 PM Rebroadcast of early Mass and Holy Hour from Fribourg6:30 PM Low Mass from Sarasota, followed by Holy Hour8:00 PM Solemn Mass with veneration of relic from Guadalajara, Mexico9:30 PM Holy Hour from Guadalajara10:30 PM Vigil (Adoración Nocturna) before the Blessed Sacrament from Guadalajara** The Adoracion Nocturna will be broadcast until the Mass begins from Fribourg at 3 AM (ET).
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| [From the time of the Regensburg Address] |
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| As in Turkey in 1915, a Christian Genocide is happening once again. |
Published in Archdiocesan weekly “La Voce del Popolo” (The Voice of the People), edition of the upcoming Sunday, July 27, 2014, the letter of greetings from the Archbishop addressed to the Muslims resident in the territory of the diocese of Turin, on the occasion of the celebrations for the conclusion of the Ramadan fast at the end of July. The entire text is attached, as consigned in original copy to the Islamic cultural centers of Turin (with mosques attached) by the parish priests of the respective territorial areas.
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Dear Muslim faithful
Today the month of fasting, characterized by your intense personal effort of great dedication to God and renewal of the faith concludes with the feast of “id ad fitr”
We hope, above all, that your obedience to the will of God is strengthened and that you have been filled with every virtue, as your famous medieval theologian affirms, Adu Hamid al-Ghazli: “Clothe yourselves again with the conduct of God[…]. The maximum perfection, for the believer, consists in getting closer to his Lord, making his own those attributes that merit every praise: science, justice, piety, goodness, benignity, beneficence, mercy, good counsel, encouragement in the good and protection from evil.”
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| A perfectly European-looking gentleman: Abdülmecid II, last Turkish Caliph - Paris, circa 1935 |
In matters political Islam is a system of despotism at home and of aggression abroad. The Prophet commanded absolute submission to the imam. In no case was the sword to be raised against him. The rights of non-Moslem subjects are of the vaguest and most limited kind, and a religious war is a sacred duty whenever there is a chance of success against the "Infidel". Medieval and modern Mohammedan, especially Turkish, persecutions of both Jews and Christians are perhaps the best illustration of this fanatical religious and political spirit.
The complexities (and double-games) of the Islamic world are a labyrinth for the “infidel”. It is a labyrinth that western reason, such as it now is, has never mastered, and that it cannot master now with hellfire missiles and unmanned drones....
Wearied or sickened by all this? Yes. But it is the fate of the impotent western powers that is being determined by it. For the “jihad” is advancing in Syria to the eastern Mediterranean seaboard, while the muezzin’s call to an increasingly ardent faith grows more insistent throughout the Islamic world....
After the publication in the US in 2005 of my book The Losing Battle With Islam, [then Massachusetts Senator and current American Secretary of State John] Kerry rang me to discuss the arguments in it. When he became secretary of state I told him (with some presumption) that the non-Muslim world is too unaware of what is afoot, hobbled by its wishful thinking and lack of knowledge, and whistling in the dark. In a position paper I wrote for him, I set out a list of the failures that the west, and especially the US, has on its hands. Among them are the failure to recognise the ambition of radical Islam; the failure to condemn the silence of most Muslims at the crimes committed in their names; the failure to respond adequately to the persecution of Christians in many Muslim lands; the failure to grasp the nature of the non-military skills that are being deployed against the non-Muslim world – skills of manoeuvre, skills in deceiving the gullible, skills in making temporary truces in order to gain time (as in Iran); and, perhaps above all, the failure to realise the scale and speed of Islam’s advance.“If things continue like this,” I told friend Kerry, “the history of our age may one day be written under a caliphate’s supervision.” I added brashly: “Get your aides to read the Quran. Keep political correctors at bay ...”. ... [T]oday’s Islam is the most redoubtable adversary to the American imperium it has ever faced, the challenge of the Comintern included....To the aid of Islam has also come the betrayal by much of today’s left of its notionally humane principles, as Christians are assaulted and murdered (shades of what was done to the Jews in the 1930s) and their churches desecrated and destroyed from Egypt to the Central African Republic, from Iran to Indonesia, and from Pakistan to Nigeria.
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| [Cross removed this week from dome of Syriac Orthodox Cathedral, Mosul, Iraq] |
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| Important |
It was unclear whether Syrian troops, who apparently advanced in and around the northern city of Aleppo on Monday, July 7, would be able to halt the ISIL fighters. Yet, most Christians have already been forced to flee Syria and Iraq, where the head of the Chaldean-Catholic Church, Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, fears Christian life will eventually come to an end in the region.
"In ten years there will perhaps be 50,000 Christians left" in Iraq, he said in a statement released by Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need and obtained by BosNewsLife. "Prior to 2003, this figure was about 1.2 million. Within ten years we have shrunk to a community of perhaps four to five hundred thousand faithful," he added.
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FOOTBALL INTEREST
Sako fears Iraq will soon fall apart. "At present there are three fragments of Iraq, a Sunni one, a Kurdish one and a Shiite one. The Kurds already enjoy autonomy anyway. The Shiites do as well in a sense. Now the Sunnis are following suit. Iraq will therefore be divided up."
The bishop condemned Western states who he said "find football" in the current World Cup "more interesting than the situation here or in Syria."
He said Western policy only pursues economic interests. "The international community should put pressure on Iraqi politicians to make them find a political solution and form a government of national unity."
Sako views the Sunni oriented ISIL as a global security threat. The group, he added, "intends to found an Islamic state with oil wells in order to Islamize the world. I think this is a danger for all." [Source]
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| Not important |
"The eradication of religious minorities is not, alas, a collateral damage of the insane strategy of the murderers: it is their declared goal," says Cardinal Barbarin. And he adds, "Because these are men who are being murdered, in silence, between two waves of a Brazilian soccer stadium," he insists by evoking the global enthusiasm for the football world cup. [Source][Original article]
