What is driving Pope Francis to enter a war zone, during a global pandemic?
Middle East
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
Martin Sheen: How Mother Teresa, Dan Berrigan’s lawyer and I fought to end the Gulf War
The carnage unleashed in the Persian Gulf compelled me to act yet again in hopes that somehow the bloodletting would end.
Posted inFaith, Vatican Dispatch
Interview: What to expect when Pope Francis makes his historic trip to Iraq
An interview with Cardinal Leonardi Sandri, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Oriental Churches
Posted inFaith, News
Explainer: A brief history of the Christian sites Pope Francis will visit in Iraq
Pope Francis hopes to embark on the first-ever papal visit to the biblical land of Iraq in early March in a spiritual pilgrimage.
Posted inFaith, News
Deadly suicide bombing in Baghdad won’t stop Pope Francis from visiting Iraq, patriarch says
Iraq’s top Catholic official said Thursday that a deadly suicide bombing in Baghdad hasn’t thwarted Pope Francis’ plans to visit.
Posted inFeatures, Politics & Society
Our world is ripe for revolution. 10 years after Occupy and the Arab Spring, what have we learned?
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.
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Pope Francis denounces bombings in Baghdad that left at least 31 dead
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.
Posted inFaith, Faith in Focus
What I saw in Bethlehem this Christmas: Shuttered shops, an open church door—and hope.
This year, I barely recognized Bethlehem, the city I know so well.
Posted inPolitics & Society, Short Take
Former Jerusalem archbishop: How long will Catholics keep ignoring the suffering of Palestinians?
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.”
Posted inNews, Politics & Society
Summit speakers discuss ongoing efforts to combat religious persecution
“Any religious adherent can be a victim,” he said, and the oppressor can be “whoever has the power of the state behind them.”