UNESCO, UAE begin reconstruction of historic Iraqi church destroyed by ISIS

"Work has begun to rebuild a Christian church in Iraq destroyed by the Islamic State as part of a partnership between the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Muslim-majority United Arab Emirates.

UNESCO announced last week that construction has commenced on the Conventual Church of Our Lady of the Hour in Mosul. Mosul was once Iraq’s second-largest city before it was overrun by the Islamic State terrorist group in 2014 but liberated by U.S.-backed coalition forces in 2017. 

"With the official approval from The Dominican order, UNESCO — in close collaboration with relevant authorities — will now start the stabilization and rehabilitation of The Conventual Church of Our Lady of the Hour in Mosul,” the international body said in a statement. "

Sri Lanka attacks: 'International network' linked to bombings

 

From the BBC:

 

"A wave of bombings that killed 290 people in Sri Lanka on Sunday was carried out with the support of an international network, officials said.

The government has blamed a little-known local jihadist group, National Thowheed Jamath, although no-one has yet admitted carrying out the bombings.
Another 500 people were injured in the suicide attacks on churches and hotels.
Police arrested 24 people in a series of raids and the president's office declared a state of national emergency."


Hundreds more Catholic martyred on Easter Sunday by the followers of that horrible and violent ideology of islam. 

Holy Week terrorism suspect arrested

 

"According to Spanish federal police, Spain’s National Intelligence Center and the Moroccan secret service, 23-year-old Zouhair el Bouhdidi was planning detonate explosives during Holy Week processions in Seville, the city in which he lived.

The arrest took place after the Spanish authorities informed the Moroccans that el Bouhdidi had traveled to Morocco, allegedly in preparation for the attack, according to Spanish newspaper El Confidencial."

Maryland man inspired by Islamic State attack plotted to drive truck into National Harbor pedestrians, officials say

18 years after 9/11 and we are now so used to terroristic plots they barely make the news!

"A Maryland man inspired by the Islamic State group plotted to ram a stolen U-Haul truck into as many pedestrians as possible at a popular convention and tourist destination just outside the nation’s capital, federal prosecutors said Monday.
The allegation was made in a court filing as prosecutors in Maryland urged a judge to keep the defendant, 28-year-old Rondell Henry, detained on a charge of driving a stolen vehicle across state lines. The police arrested him on March 28 after officers who discovered the stolen truck saw him leap over a security fence."

Cardinal Sarah on Mass Migration


"It is better to help people flourish in their culture than to encourage them to come to a Europe in full decadence,” he said. “It is a false exegesis to use the word of God to promote migration. God never wanted these heartbreaks.”

The Guinean cardinal, one of the most conservative voices in the Vatican, said priests, bishops and even cardinals were today afraid to proclaim divine teaching.

“They are afraid of being frowned upon, of being seen as reactionaries. So they say fuzzy, vague and imprecise things to escape criticism, and they marry the stupid evolution of the world,” he said.

Migrants arriving in Europe were parked somewhere without work or dignity, he added. “Is that what the Church wants?” he asked.

 

The Church should not support “this new form of slavery” because the West, with its low birth rate, risked disappearing, he argued. “If Europe disappears, and with it the priceless values of the Old Continent, Islam will invade the world and we will completely change culture, anthropology and moral vision.”

 

Many of us Catholics were praying for an African Pope to follow Benedict XVI due to their orthodoxy, strength and great understanding of real Christianity in the real world.  Unfortunately we will have to wait.

All In The Family: ISIS Edition

 

Why is this news not a major news story?  Whenever I see an article on a 'right wing' or 'left wing' site, I always google it to confirm other major news sources have the same details more or less.  I see mostly local Texas news covering the original story and the AP story is here.  But Americans going overseas to join the Islamic State, or Al Shabab, or any other terrorist organization (or anyone covering up for them) should warrant major news coverage.  Now that ISIS has been mostly defeated, we need to bring to justice ALL the people who joined them.  We should not allow what happened with the Nazis to happen with ISIS - hundreds of them starting a new life somewhere else and living freely for decades. No country should allow anyone to return from Syria or Iraq, let them rot in jail or be executed where they caused such evil.

 

"Arman (28) and Oman (27), ISIS fighters and ideologues to their core, haven’t turned up from the battlefield. The brothers were last known to be fighting with ISIS in Syria after allegedly traveling there from Egypt between October and December 2014. Their father, Mohommad Hasnain Ali, is set to be released from a Dallas halfway house on April 17 as part of his year-long federal prison sentence for covering their tracks. Their mother, Sumaiya Ali, is in federal prison in Carswell, New Mexico until April 2020 for lying on their behalf to investigating FBI agents, although she is writing letters to the judge begging for earlier transfer to home confinement. More on that later.

The Ali family is hardly alone these days as the remnants of destroyed ISIS society are somehow fit back into various parts of the world. Not more than 250 Americans attempted to join the caliphate; not all successfully. Now comes the final chapter of the story, the returnees."

From the Boston Pilot:



    Hundreds prepare to enter the Church with Rite of Election

"MALDEN -- Nearly 500 people preparing to enter the Church at Easter gathered at Immaculate Conception Parish in Malden March 10 for the Rite of Election and Call to Continuing Conversion. These ceremonies were one of the last steps for catechumens, who had never been baptized, and candidates, who are Christian but not Catholic, in their preparation to enter the Catholic Church.
"One of the catechumens from Mission Church was Ahmed Salem, who has a Muslim background. He came to the United States from Egypt, where, he said, he saw churches explode "on (a) weekly basis," yet Christians continued to meet.

"The model of love and peace they showed was amazing for me. So I was curious," Salem said."

Police: Members of a family bombed 3 Indonesian churches

"Coordinated suicide bombings carried out by members of the same family struck three churches in Indonesia's second-largest city Sunday, police said, as the world's most populous Muslim nation recoiled in horror at one of its worst attacks since the 2002 Bali bombings.

At least seven people died at the churches in Surabaya along with the six family members, the youngest of whom were girls aged 9 and 12, according to police. Another 41 people were injured.

Indonesia's president condemned the attacks as "barbaric."

  

National police chief Tito Karnavian said that the father detonated a car bomb, two sons aged 18 and 16 used a motorcycle for their attack, and the mother and her two daughters wore explosives."

Monks of Tibhirine, depicted in ‘Of Gods and Men’, to be beatified

From The Anchoress (Elizabeth Scalia) who raves about the film.  I need to see this.


"The seven Cistercian monks of Tibhirine had been abducted in March 1996 in their monastery of Our Lady of the Atlas, 80 km south of Algiers. Their death was announced on May 23 by a statement from the Armed Islamic Group (GIA). The heads of the Trappist monks were found on May 30, 1996, without the mystery of their death being fully clarified."

Hundreds gather to mourn murdered priest Father Jacques Hamel

"Hundreds of mourners crammed into Rouen Cathedral in northern France on Tuesday for the funeral of the elderly Roman Catholic priest knifed to death at a church altar by two Islamist militants.

Father Jacques Hamel was leading morning mass in the nearby industrial town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray last Tuesday when the attackers stormed in, forced the 85-year-old to his knees and slit his throat while chanting in Arabic."

Paris terror arrest after gas tanks found in Notre Dame car

"Paris police have arrested a man on the terrorism watch list after his car was found near the Notre Dame Cathedral with seven gas cylinders inside.
The Peugeot 607 was found with its hazard warning lights flashing and without number plates, police said.
One of the canisters, on the front passenger seat, was empty, and there were no detonating devices inside.
In November, 130 people died in Paris in a series of terror attacks carried out by so-called Islamic State (IS)."

Bishop Murphy and Cardinal Dolan visit persecuted Christians in Iraq

Good for them!

Catholic News Service

"Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre traveled with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and Chair of Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), to Iraqi Kurdistan this week on a pastoral visit to that region’s displaced Christian families.

The group spent April 9-11 in Kurdistan, the autonomous region of northern Iraq. When Islamic State swept through Mosul and Qaraqosh in 2014, more than 125,000 Christians, along with other victims, fled to safety in Kurdistan, where CNEWA has helped local churches construct housing, clinics and schools."

Another home grown terrorist on Long Island

"To his Long Island family, Marcos Alonso Zea was an honor student, aspiring teacher and good Catholic.

To leaders of a mosque he visited, he was a young convert in a traditional gown who called himself "Ali."

To the FBI, he was a terrorist in the making, intent on joining al-Qaida and waging "violent jihad."

Zea, 25, grew up in Brentwood, raised by immigrants: a mother from Guatemala, Sandra; and a father from Colombia, Alvaro. The family, including Zea and several siblings, regularly attended St. Anne Catholic Church, his parents said.

After graduating from Brentwood High School in 2006, Zea took classes at Dowling College and Suffolk County Community College's Brentwood campus, where he earned a liberal arts degree in August 2011, officials said.

"He wanted to be somebody important in life," Sandra Zea said Friday in Spanish, referring to her son's teaching aspirations.

He completed a teaching course last December, she said, proudly displaying the certificate during an interview at the family's tidy home in a working-class neighborhood of Brentwood.

But Marcos Zea was also increasingly fascinated with Islam. Prosecutors say he converted in 2009."

Read the rest of this very sad story at Newsday.

Jesuit says Britain and US are ‘crazy’ for backing Islamists in Egypt

Some common sense from The Catholic Herald in the UK:

"Fr Boulad said the Muslim Brotherhood had a systematic plan to harass Christians so that they would leave Egypt and that among their tactics was the kidnapping and rape of Christian girls.


The organisation also invokes human rights to silence critics in France, Canada and elsewhere, using the courts against people who speak up, he said. The government cries “Islamophobia” and it “is politically incorrect to be an Islamophobe”, he said.

“The United States, France and Great Britain are supporting this. It’s crazy,” he added.“Intellectual and factual terrorism is being implemented not only in Egypt but all over the world. You cannot speak up. They go to court; they accuse you. “As long as Islam is not reformed, we are going to catastrophe,” Fr Boulad said.

Fortunately, he added, some people had the courage to speak up.

He said he hoped that liberal democracies would support the growing coalition opposing the Egyptian ruling party."

Islam's Civil War

Michael Coren writes a great column in the Toronto Sun about the battle within Islam:  Extremist Vs. Moderates and how the west must support the moderates.

Islam's Civil War

"Islam is undergoing a civil war, between those who interpret their primary holy texts literally and those who understand and embrace metaphor and modernity.

As author Daniel Pipes puts it, if fundamentalist Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the solution.

But if the moderates have even a hope of winning, we have to enable and empower them. And we don’t do that by pretending, as British Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson have just done, that violence and Islam have no connection."

Woolwich heroine says Catholic faith inspired her to confront attackers

In yet another terrorist attack by muslims, this time in Woolwich England, two muslims savagely hit an innocent man with their car and then cut him to death with a butcher's knife.  A woman got off a bus to try to help the dead man and she confronted the attackers.  Just as the attackers were motivated by their muslim faith, that woman, Ingrid Loyau-Kennet, was motivated by her Catholic faith.

"A mother of two who calmly confronted the Woolwich attackers on Wednesday has attributed her courage to her Catholic faith.


Ingrid Loyau-Kennet, a practising Catholic, told the Daily Telegraph: “I live my life as a Christian. I believe in thinking about others and loving thy neighbour. We all have a duty to look after each other. A whole group of people walking towards those guys would have found it easy to take those weapons out of their hands. But me, on my own, I couldn’t.”

Read more here at the Catholic Herald.

The Arab Collapse

Ralph Peters is a columnist in the NY Post, a retired US Army Lt. Colonel, and certainly not a dove when it comes to war, foreign policy and geopolitics.  I think he has an good understanding of the middle east and his latest column calling for the US to stay out of Syria is excellent.  America has become addicted to wars and we have to stop the mentality that we must kill in order to promote the good around the world.  The popularity of neo-conservativism in America among Catholics is understandable due to issues of abortion, general attitudes towards Christianity and religion and the Catholic Church in particular, family issues, the gay agenda, etc... But the worst aspect, the policies that are most wrong, the most incompatible with traditional Catholic teaching is the neo-conservative support of wars.  I have found my own views on this shifting towards the libertarian view of war and I think more and more Catholics are waking up on this issue. Peters shows why the USA does not need and should not interfere (again) in the middle east.

Go read Peters' whole article. 

Excerpt:

"The Arab Spring has unleashed the Arab Collapse. Everybody still standing in the region is picking the flesh of the helpless. The Islamist cancer proved more virulent than Arabs themselves expected, while dying regimes behave with unrestrained ruthlessness.

And our diplomats still think everyone can be cajoled into harmony.

We’re witnessing a titanic event, the crack-up of a long-tottering civilization. Arab societies grew so corrupt and stagnant that violent upheaval became inevitable. That’s what we’re seeing in Syria and Iraq — two names, one struggle — and will find elsewhere tomorrow.

We can’t stop it, we can’t fix it, and we don’t understand it. But we can stay out of it.

When the US is in the Middle East, the Arabs want us out. When we’re out, they want us in. But our purported Arab (and Turkish) allies consistently agree that Uncle Sam should pay the party bill, while they take home all the presents.

Yes, Syria’s humanitarian crisis is appalling. And no, I don’t like to see innocents dying or suffering. But the calls from the region for American action are nakedly cynical.

Turkey has the largest military in NATO after our own, but cries “helpless” crocodile tears over Syrian refugees — while dreaming of rebuilding the Ottoman Empire upon their ruined lives. Our Saudi “friends” spent decades building the most-sophisticated military arsenal in the Middle East, apart from Israel. Now the Saudis wring their hands over Syria’s misery — but won’t intervene directly to stop the killing.

The Saudi position is always “You and him fight!” As long ago as Desert Storm, Saudis joked about renting the American army and our bumpkin gullibility. (Try to find one US officer who’s worked with the Saudis and doesn’t hate their guts. . .) Now they want Washington to spend our blood and treasure to open the mosques of Damascus to their Wahhabi cult."

Bombers target Catholic church in Benghazi, priests escape unhurt

I wonder if the State Dept. would like to spin this Benghazi story?


"Fr Alan Castillo and Fr Raghib Marzouk escaped unhurt after a bomb went off at the Catholic church in Via Torino, Benghazi, late Friday night.

According to sources, a bomb was placed at the main of the church when an explosion rocked the area at around 11.30pm shattering several glass windows on the opposite side of the narrow road and also several windows in the building adjacent to the church housing the priests.

Fortunately, Maltese bishop Mons. Sylvester Magro was not there as he is currently in Spain attending a religious function."

Egypt's Christians Celebrate Coptic Easter

Happy Easter to all the Eastern Christians celebrating it tomorrow, especially those suffering under muslim domination. 

"Pope Tawadros II led his first Easter Mass as head of the ancient Coptic Church in Egypt praying for security and prosperity on Saturday at the same cathedral that was the site of sectarian clashes weeks earlier.

The Orthodox Easter mass, meant to be a religious celebration that marks the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion, took place amid increased attacks on churches.

Egypt's Orthodox Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the country's 90 million people, have long complained of discrimination. Clashes between Muslims and Christians have become more frequent after a breakdown in security following the ouster of longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak from power in a 2011 uprising."

More here from ABC News

Pope Francis to canonise 800 Italians slain during historic siege

"Pope Francis is preparing to canonise an estimated 800 Italian laymen killed by Ottoman soldiers in the 15th century. The canonisation service will be on May 12 in St Peter’s Square and it will be the first carried out by the Pontiff since he was elected in early March.

The killing of the martyrs by Ottoman troops, who launched a weeks-long siege of Otranto, a small port town at the most eastern tip of southern Italy, took place in 1480.

When Otranto residents refused to surrender to the Ottoman army, the soldiers were ordered to massacre all males over the age of 15. Many were ordered to convert to Islam or die, but Blessed Antonio Primaldo, a tailor, spoke on the prisoners’ behalf. “We believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God, and for Jesus Christ we are ready to die,” he said, according to Blessed John Paul II, who visited Otranto in 1980 for the 500th anniversary of the martyrs’ deaths."

More on the canonizations here.

More on the history of Otranto can be found on Catholic Answers here - How the 800 Martyrs of Otranto Saved Rome