MONGOLIA - The Church celebrates 25 years of presence   After 66 years of communist dictatorship, Mongolia drafted its first constitution in 1992 and religious freedom was recognized for the first time. That same year the country established diplomatic relations with the Holy See, and the Catholic Church established a presence [...]

IRAQ - Archbishop calls for educational and constitutional reform to combat terrorism   Habib al-Naufali, Chaldean Archbishop of Basra, spoke at the second International Conference on Victims of Ethnic and Religious Violence in the Middle East , which took place in the Royal Palace of El Pardo in Spain. According [...]

Cardinal Baltazar Porras: “The room to manoeuvre freely is getting smaller and smaller. At the moment, everything here is one-dimensional.” During a visit to the international head office of the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the archbishop of Mérida, Cardinal Baltazar Enrique Porras, spoke with María [...]

SYRIA - “Freedom crucified!” Testimony of a priest abducted by IS   How did I – taken hostage by a group of jihadists, imprisoned for almost five months, frequently threatened with beheading, and after witnessing the abduction and imprisonment of 250 of my parishioners – how did I respond to the experience [...]

  EGYPT - Christian pilgrims massacred when gunmen attack buses   Gunmen attacked a bus convoy carrying Coptic Christians in Minya, central Egypt, killing at least 28 people including children and wounding 25 others.  Two buses carrying worshipers from the nearby province of Beni Suef and a pickup truck carrying laborers [...]

PHILIPPINES - Priest and staff held hostage by Muslim extremists A Catholic priest and his staff are reportedly being held hostage by ISIS-inspired lawless elements that have occupied a number of facilities and public buildings in the Islamic city of Marawi, Central Mindanao, Philippines. Archbishop Socrates Villegas, President of the [...]

GUINEA - Church flourishes again after years of suppression by dictator Guinea is an overwhelmingly Islamic country in which roughly 85% of the population of 11.6 million people are Muslims. Christians make up only around 8%, while the remainder of the population are adherents of traditional African religions. For decades [...]

SOUTH SUDAN - "It takes unity to achieve peace" - Bishop Kussala   Bishop Barani Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio has published “An Open Letter of Hope and Peace to the Elders of Greater Bahr El Ghazal.” In it Bishop Kussala, the president of the Sudanese Catholic Bishops’ Conference, called [...]

BANGASSOU - Catholic bishop shields Muslims   Spanish missionary Bishop Juan José Aguirre of Bangassou in the Central African Republic, has denounced the outbreak of revenge violence against Muslims in his city by the Anti-balaka, a group of mainly animist and anti-Muslim guerrillas. He was speaking to the Spanish office [...]

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC - Thousands take refuge in church properties as violence erupts again Violence has erupted once again in the Central African Republic. In response the United Nations plans to deploy additional peacekeeping forces in the Central African Republic diamond-mining town of Bangassou to “neutralize attackers, protect civilians and facilitate [...]