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 there, with the missionaries of...

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 to Archbishop Al Naufali, only...

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 Lozano about the exceedingly grave...

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 of my liberation? Was there...

  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 were travelling together to the...