BOSNIA A creeping threat to the existence of Catholics in the country The Balkan state of Bosnia and Herzegovina has long since disappeared from the headlines. Officially, the war there ended with the signing of the Dayton Accords in 1995. But the wounds of the war are still very much in evidence and continue to...

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC Baptist elder and aid workers massacred by Islamic rebels Six aid workers, including a Christian father of seven, were massacred in an ambush by armed militants in the Central African Republic. 66-year-old Gabriel Ole, who served as a church elder for a Baptist church in the capital of Bangui, lost his life...

 CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC 1,000 Muslims seek refuge in a church from militia waiting to kill them More than 1,000 Muslims have been hiding from a hostile militia inside a Roman Catholic Church at a compound in Bangassou, Central African Republic. While some media reports say the militia is mostly made up of Christians, Catholic sources are...

VATICAN Pope Francis to visit 3 Baltic countries in September   The Vatican has announced that Pope Francis will visit Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on 22-25 Sep. The Pope is expected to visit Vilnius and Kaunas in Lithuania; Riga and Aglona in Latvia, and Tallinn in Estonia. The logo and motto for the Papal visit...

EGYPT Cathedral dedicated to beheaded Coptic martyrs is inaugurated Three years after the massacre of the 21 young Copts, a cathedral for the “martyrs of the faith” was completed in recent months. It is located in the small village of Al Ur in the province of Minya, the birthplace of the majority of the dead,...

CHINA Another church damaged despite a historic agreement with the Vatican Just a few weeks after the meeting between the Chinese and Vatican delegations, which reportedly resulted in the drafting of a “historic” agreement on the nominations of bishops in the Chinese Catholic Church, reports are emerging of attacks on churches in a few areas...

The CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC “We were obliged to bury many people” The present situation in the Central African Republic, following five years of war and violence, is a profoundly distressing one. Speaking to the 37th Ordinary Session of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Bishop Juan José Aguirre-Muñoz of Bangassou described the country as...

DAMASCUS “The Christians are scared to death and fear for their lives”   The current military offensive in Syria not only affects the inhabitants of the Eastern Ghouta region but also those of neighbouring Damascus. The shelling of the capital city continues. The Christian district at the eastern edge of the old city has also...