Category: Ecumenism

Pope Francis Praises London’s New Muslim Mayor

pope-francis-meets-migrants-lesbos2Pope Francis says that London’s election of the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital is an example of how migrants can be integrated in Europe.

Voters in the English capital elected Sadiq Khan, the son of a Pakistani bus driver, on May 6 after a campaign in which the Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith, was criticized for focusing on Labour candidate Khan’s religion.

In an interview with French Catholic newspaper La Croix published on Tuesday, the leader of the Catholic Church said that Khan’s election provided an encouraging sign as other parts of Europe put up borders to migrants coming from the Middle East and Africa. Francis, 79, cited the orchestrators of the Brussels attacks—in which suicide bombings at an airport and metro station killed 36 people in March—as an example of the consequences of not integrating migrants. Many of the perpetrators of both the Brussels attacks and Paris attacks that killed 130 people in November 2015 grew up in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital, seen as a haven for extremists.  Continue reading…

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Generate new models of economic progress, Pope urges business leaders

pope_francis_centesimus_annus_pro_pontifice_foundation_may_13_2016_credit_lor_cnaVatican City, May 14, 2016 / 06:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Economic worldviews based only on material well-being cannot contribute to dignified labor and new models of economic progress are needed, Pope Francis told a gathering of business experts on Friday.

“An economic vision geared to profit and material well-being alone is – as experience is daily showing us – incapable of contributing in a positive way to a globalization that favours the integral development of the world’s peoples, a just distribution of the earth’s resources, the guarantee of dignified labour and the encouragement of private initiative and local enterprise,” Pope Francis said May 13 to the members of the Centesimus Annus pro Pontifice Foundation.  Source

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The eight things Catholics and Muslims agree on

qoran_bible_400x254The document is the result of the fourth Catholic-Muslim colloquium on interreligious dialogue

Senior leaders from the Catholic Church and the Muslim community have issued an eight-point joint statement reflecting their shared beliefs.

The document, which is the result of the fourth Catholic-Muslim colloquium on interreligious dialogue, includes a call for basic human rights to be protected by law, a pledge of solidarity with all those in need, a rejection of all forms of proselytism and a focus on the right of young people to an education that is “respectful of diversity”, reports Vatican Radio.

The communiqué came at the conclusion of a two-day meeting at the Vatican entitled ‘Shared values in social and political life: Christian and Muslim perspectives’. Delegates from a dozen different countries came together, organised by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and Jordan’s Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies. They were joined by Pope Francis on the concluding day.  Source

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Interfaith Leaders Gather To Promote Peace In The Heart Of The Christian South

572cfc951300001a01380d99Renowned spiritual leaders and activists will convene in Louisville, Kentucky for the 21st annual Festival of Faiths later this month to address strategies for peace in an increasingly violent world.

The interfaith gathering, which is put on every year by the Louisville-based Center for Interfaith Relations, will host figures like Karen Armstrong, Pico Iyer, Vandana Shiva, Linda Sarsour and Jim Wallis for a long weekend of events centered on the theme “Sacred Wisdom: Pathways to Nonviolence.”  Source

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Russian Orthodox Patriarch declares worldwide ‘holy war’ on terrorism

572caab6c4618844798b45d1The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has called the fight against terrorism a “holy war” and urged international unity and an abandoning of double standards to defeat this global evil.

“Today, when our warriors take part in combat operations in the Middle East, we know that this is not an aggression, occupation or an attempt to impose some ideology on other people, this has nothing to do with supporting certain governments,” Patriarch Kirill said as he held the Friday mass at the major Moscow memorial to those who fought in World War II. “This is the fight against the fearsome foe that is currently not only spreading evil through the Middle East but also threatening the whole of mankind.”

He added: “Today, we call this evil terrorism.”  Source

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Christians to flock to massive atheist rally in D.C.

lincoln-memorialCall it resistance with love. A massive gathering of atheists that takes place every year in Washington, D.C., will now face some concerted counterpointing, thanks to the rally call of one church in California for those of Christian faith to travel to the freethinkers’ scene to try and change hearts.

The Living Waters Church, out of Pasadena, California, and founded by Ray Comfort, has scheduled to film its next episode of its televised “The Way of the Master” program in the nation’s capital – and it’s coincidentally on the same June 4 day as the “Reason Rally.” The annual event is basically a “mega atheist gathering” and this year will include “big-name speakers such as Bill Nye, Penn Jillette, Lawrence Krauss and actor Johnny Depp,” the church said in a statement on its website. Source

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Why Thousands Of Pagans Are Standing Up For The Environment

571935391600002a0031c5e7In the months leading up to last year’s Earth Day, a group of roughly 50 pagans gathered in a closed Facebook group to draft a collective call to action. On April 22, 2015, they published the “Pagan Community Statement on the Environment,” which framed climate change as a global moral dilemma to which pagans and other people of faith must respond…

“There are Witches, Wiccans, Druids, Shamans, Goddess Worshipers, Pantheists, Animists, Humanistic Pagans, Atheistic Pagans, Heathens, Polytheists, Reconstctionists, Buddho-Pagans, Christo-Pagans, Quaker Pagans, Unitarian Universalist Pagans, and many more,” Halstead told The Huffington Post…

“Speaking in harmony does not mean everyone being of one mind or agreeing on every point,” Halstead said. “It means temporarily setting aside our egos and prioritizing our individual disagreements when a collective voice is urgently needed, as it is now.”

“I hope that this helps demonstrate to the interfaith activist community that Pagans are serious and worthy partners in the fight to turn the tide of global climate change.  Source

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Protestant South Becoming a New Catholic Stronghold (2013)

st-_dominics_monastery_courtyardDixie Catholics credit the strong Southern sense of community, and dialogue with faithful Protestants, with helping to power the Church’s growth there.

LINDEN, Va. — In the waves of turbulence that rippled throughout the Catholic Church in the 1970s, the nuns of St. Dominic’s Monastery found themselves forced to leave their longtime home in Wisconsin in search of a new one.

The nuns moved to a temporary residence in Washington, D.C., while looking for a permanent setting conducive to the cloistered, contemplative life they sought to lead. It would be more than two decades before they found one. When they did, it was in what may seem a most unlikely place: the rural northeast of Virginia, considered one of the Protestant Bible Belt states of the South.

The story of St. Dominic’s Monastery’s southern move may be the story of U.S. Catholicism. New data shows that some of the fastest-growing dioceses in the country are deep in the U.S. South.

The third-fastest-developing diocese is Atlanta, which saw the number of registered parishioners explode from nearly 322,000 in 2002 to 1 million in 2012 — an increase of more than twofold, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. Atlanta also has the largest Eucharistic Congress in the country, with an annual attendance of about 30,000, according to an archdiocesan official. Source

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Megachurch Pastor Preaches About Christians Making the ‘Dangerous Prayer’

a-gathering-of-evangelical-christians-in-washingtonChristians must push themselves to pray the “dangerous prayer” of availability, Pastor James Brown of Crossroads Church said in a recent sermon, telling his congregation that when “God calls you, he equips you.”

Brown, who serves as the executive pastor of discipleship at the Minnesota-based evangelical church, said in a March sermon that Christians need to be more like children in their service to God, pushing themselves to “fearlessly” invite God’s presence into their lives. Source

 

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