A priest was killed and another person seriously injured when two members from an Islamic extremist group stormed the Church of Saint-Etienne du Rouvray in Normandy, France, on July 26. The assailants slit the throat of Father Jacques Hamel, who was 85 years old.
In response, the Union of Federations of the Adventist Church in France (UFA) issued the following statement: Continue reading
French religious leaders have called for more security at places of worship following the murder of an elderly priest in Normandy on Tuesday.
Representatives of Christian, Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist faiths spoke after meeting President Hollande.
On Wednesday evening Mr Hollande went on to attend a mass for the priest in Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral. Continue reading
Some 1,700 Christians from around 300 denominations have met in Munich for a ‘Together in Europe’ gathering of the Ecumenical Congress promoting unity between Catholics, Protestants and Evangelicals.
In a meeting supported by Pope Francis and Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I, leaders of the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, several Orthodox Churches, Protestant denominations and free evangelical denominations including some Baptists and Pentecostals debated for three days about how to walk towards “encounter, reconciliation and hope in a better future.” Continue reading
Abuse screamed on trams. Polish communities centres daubed with obscenities. People being labelled racist insults in their own home towns. It’s been a bit of depressing week on the intolerance front hasn’t it?
But here’s something that may have passed you by which shows that there are still plenty of people from all walks of life who are doing their best to encourage tolerance.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who is a practising Muslim, was pictured breaking his Ramadan fast alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis.
In general, Pope Francis gets high marks for his inter-religious outreach, which has been a core feature of his papacy from the beginning. Shortly after his election in March 2013, for instance, he went to a juvenile detention center in Rome and included two Muslims among the inmates whose feet he washed.
Since then, he’s traveled to Israel and impressed Jews with his commitment to the Jewish/Christian relationship, he’s become only the second pope to enter a Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, and, while in the country, he also donned a saffron robe given to him by a Hindu holy man during an interfaith meeting. Continue reading
YEREVAN—As a centerpiece of his Papal Visit to Armenia, Pope Francis held an Ecumenical service for peace in Yerevan’s Republic Square, during which he urged Armenia’s youth to be active peacemakers in a world “suffering from persecutions and conflict.”
Pope Francis and Catholicos Karekin II led the procession to the Republic Square as all bells at Yerevan churches tolled simultaneously to mark this historic occasion. Continue reading
Pope Francis is expected to avoid using the word “genocide” when he visits a memorial to the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians this weekend.
His notable change of tone from a statement last year that the wholesale killing of Armenian Christians between 1915 and 1923 was the “first genocide of the 20th century” is aimed at avoiding a repeat of the ensuing diplomatic rift between Turkey and the Vatican.
The pontiff’s three-day visit to Armenia, which begins on Friday, includes prayers at Tsitsernakaberd, widely known as the genocide memorial and museum, in the capital, Yerevan. Continue reading…
The general secretary of the World Council of Churches has expressed “shock, outrage and sadness” over the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida on June 12 said to be the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
In the attack, 50 people are reported to have lost their lives and 53 more were wounded in an attack by a single gunman on a nightclub frequented by members of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual community. Continue reading…
Shanghai, Kolkata, Jakarta, Tokyo, New York City, Hong Kong, Miami and New Orleans are not cities linked to the geography of the Reformation that was happening 500 years ago in Wittenberg.
“These are among the thousands of cities around the world that will be hit by rising sea levels as a consequence of climate change,” said World Council of Churches general secretary, Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit.
He was speaking at the meeting of the main governing body of the Lutheran World Federation, its council, in Wittenberg, Germany, where 500 years ago “waves of change reaching every country on earth were created”. Continue reading…
