Iraq’s top Catholic official said Thursday that a deadly suicide bombing in Baghdad hasn’t thwarted Pope Francis’ plans to visit.

After all the hope I and others felt as the story of 2011 swept across the world, the accounting of the decade since leans mightily toward disaster.

These were the first such suicide bombings since June 2019 and came on the eve of the pope’s planned visit to the country on March 5-8, a visit that now is under serious question.

This year, I barely recognized Bethlehem, the city I know so well.

In the 53rd year of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine, Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah asks Christians worldwide to join a nonviolent resistance movement shaped by the “logic of love.”

"Any religious adherent can be a victim," he said, and the oppressor can be "whoever has the power of the state behind them."