Iraq church bells toll once again after two years of ISIS occupation - Rome Reports

CNA - There is no confirmation that Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil was crucified on Good Friday

CNA - Several blogs and media outlets are reporting that Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil was crucified by ISIS on Good Friday.

There has been no confirmation of the event by friends, family or Fr. Uzhunnalil’s community. The original reports were based on a statement Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna allegedly made during Easter vigil services.

Bishop Paul Hinder of Southern Arabia (a region in Saudi Arabia, the country just north of Yemen where Fr. Uzhunnalil was kidnapped), told CNA on Monday that he has “strong indications that Fr. Tom is still alive in the hands of the kidnappers,” but could not give further information in order to protect the life of the priest. Bishop Hinder added that Cardinal Schönborn has since corrected his alleged statement, which was made on the basis of an incorrect statement from Archbishop Moras in Bangalore.

“Cardinal Schönborn has already corrected his statement which he had made on the basis of the wrong statement of Archbishop Moras in Bangalore. Certain media in India are too nervous and curious and not aware that they are playing with the life of Fr. Tom. I cannot say more for the reason I gave in my first sentence (to protect the life of Fr. Tom),” Bishop Hinder told CNA.

Rumors of a possible impending crucifixion spread last week on the basis of an unconfirmed e-mail and were dismissed by Fr. Uzhunnalil’s Salesian community as hearsay.

“We have absolutely no information” on Fr. Uzhunnalil, said Father Mathew Valarkot, spokesman for the Salesians’ Bangalore province to which the kidnapped priest belongs. His comments were reported last week by both by ANS news, a Salesian news agency, and UCA News, an independent Catholic news source in Asia.

Bishop says he believes priest kidnapped in Yemen is still alive (Catholic Herald)

Bishop Hinder on Kidnapped Priest: ‘Strong Indications That Father Tom Is Still Alive’ (National Catholic Register)

Salesian priest seized in Yemen remains in terrorist hands; fate uncertain (CWN, 3/21)

Unconfirmed Reports - Fr. Thomas Uzhunnalil was crucified by ISIS on Good Friday

Conflicting reports are circulating online as to whether ISIS have gone ahead with their threat to crucify the Salesian priest Fr Thomas Uzhunnalil who was kidnapped during the assault which left four sisters of the Missionaries of Charity killed in Yemen.

Austrian media are reporting that Cardinal Schonborn confirmed it during the Easter Vigil in Vienna on Saturday night.

Until such time as it is confirmed let us continue to pray for him and all the victims of the bombing in Lahore in Pakistan; and if the report proves true, let us sing a Te Deum for him and pray for the conversion of the perpetrators:

Reports here and here (in German)

Remembering the Coptic Martyrs of Libya

(Vatican Radio) Monday 15 February marked one year since video surfaced of the murder of 21 Orthodox Coptic Christians on a beach in northern Africa. The men were marched in orange suits across the beach, forced to kneel and then were beheaded by militants of the so-called Islamic State. It is impossible to forget the images of the atrocity seared into the public imagination but the Egyptian Coptic community is celebrating the memory of their martyrdom this week with prayer meetings, liturgies and reflections, culminating in a solemn liturgy on Tuesday.

Listen to the report from Vatican Radio here.

Who would dare to love ISIS? - A Letter from the People of the Cross

As the world responds to the Islamic State with hatred and vengeance, there is one group that is responding differently. They are not allies with ISIS but enemies. And they have been slain by the thousands in the hands of ISIS. ISIS calls them The Nation of the Cross - The ones they have killed are bringing a message of forgiveness and hope. Declaring a love that they do not know - A love that reconciles even the worst of us and can make enemies into brothers.

A Letter from the People of the Cross to ISIS 

The world is talking about you
Your apocalyptic dreams and spectacular sins
Are now awakening the middle east
In your holy war, come to holy ground
Come children of Abraham come
The people of the cross gathers at your gates with a message
Love is coming after you.
Like a rush of wind grazing over the pacific
From hills of the mount of olives to the desert winds of Jordan
From the cedars of lebanon to the silk roads of the East
An army comes. With no tanks or soldiers
But an army of martyrs faithful unto death
Carrying a message of life
The people of the cross
Comes to die at your gates.
If you wont hear our message with words
Then we will show you with our lives
Laid down.
For every throat you slit and every woman you rape
For every man you burn and every child you turn to dust
There is blood on your hands brother
But Come Brothers Come
Come with your bloodstained hands,
Come with your eyes full of murder for the people of the Cross,
Come lay your guns and your knives at the foot of the cross
A love that is overdue and overwhelming
Breathes through your cities
Though your sins are like scarlet
They can be washed white as snow
Though you call yourselves servants
He will make you into Sons
Where can you run from His love?
Even the darkness cannot hide you
Come Brothers Come
There is the sound of a rushing rain
To remove your sins and bind your wounds
You die for your god but our God died for us
The King of Kings comes to be the sacrificial lamb
Slain on the altar where we should have been
Jesus Christ, Isa Al Masih
Walks through the Middle East
There is forgiveness tonight oh brother
There is healing for your sins oh brother
We are no different.
Apart from Christ, we are no better than the worst jihadist
Christ has been crucified once. and for All.
To make sinners like you and me into brothers
Even you.
Even now

Interview with the man behind the video message here.

Prior to our video, ISIS released a video titled “A Message Signed by Blood to the Nation of the Cross.” They beheaded 21 of our people and issued a warning to all Christians. Someone had to respond, so I took that opportunity. Do I love ISIS? No, not at first. But as I was working on the script, my heart broke for them. God always teaches me a lesson before there is a breakthrough. I remember one morning I was so depressed because I had committed a certain sin. (Christians aren’t perfect, so don’t expect us to be!) I wanted to quit and felt so unworthy to be making this video. But I got a message from a friend at the perfect timing. It just read, “Hey Mike, God loves you.” Those simple words brought healing to my flesh. And it clicked. ISIS continues to murder people because they’ve never experienced a love like this. If I had committed such a sin and it drove me to despair, how much guilt must hang over the hearts of ISIS members, who behead people? They might never admit it, but I know the guilt and shame is there. Hurt people hurt people, and loved people love. I just broke down and prayed: Lord, I want them to experience this kind of love.

Further information here, here and here 

Pope expresses sorrow over execution of 30 Christians by the Islamic State



28 Ethiopians reportedly killed in new Islamic State massacre

Islamic State terrorists in Libya apparently killed 28 Ethiopian Christians, describing them as representatives of the “enemy Ethiopian Church,” in a new massacre.

A video that showed the beheading of 12 men and the shooting of 16 others was released on April 19. The beheadings occurred on a beach, while the 16 men were shot in the head in what appeared to be a desert location. The killings were grotesquely similar to the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in another video made public in February.

In the new video, a spokesman for the Islamic State said that the victims were “followers of the cross,” representing “the nation of the cross.” The video also showed images of the destruction of Christian churches and cemeteries, and included a warning for Christians to convert to Islam or face a similar fate.

A spokesman for the Coptic Catholic Church, Bishop Antonios Aziz Mina of Guizeh, told the Fides news service that the timing of the video’s release suggests that Islamic State leaders are very conscious of relations among the Christian churches in the Middle East. Patriarch Mathias I, the leaders of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, had been scheduled to meet with the Coptic Orthodox leader, Pope Tawadros II. (That meeting was cancelled in the wake of the killings, as the Ethiopian prelate chose to remain with his grieving people.) In the February video, the Islamic State had identified the Coptic Church as its enemy in Libya.

In both massacres, the victims were migrant workers—first from Egypt, then from Ethiopia—who had been living in Libya. Christians living in Libya have been in danger since the Islamic State established a powerful presence there, after the collapse of the Qaddafi regime.

“The chain of martyrs has not finished,” Bishop Mina observed. The Church has never complained of martyrdom, but has always celebrated martyrs as those in whom, while they are being killed, the great and consoling victory of Christ shines.”

Ethiopian Christians shot, beheaded and filmed by Islamic State 

Coptic Bishop Antonios Aziz Mina on Ethiopian Christians massacred: the martyrs are those in whom the great and consoling victory of Christ shines

ISIS slaughters 30 Christians on beach in Libya 

The Christian tragedy in the Middle East did not begin with Isis

***************

Pope's Message to His Holiness Abuna Matthias Patriarch of 

the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church

With great distress and sadness I learn of the further shocking violence perpetrated against innocent Christians in Lybia. I know that Your Holiness is suffering deeply in heart and mind at the sight of your faithful children being killed for the sole reason that they are followers of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I reach out to you in heartfelt spiritual solidarity to assure you of my closeness in prayer at the continuing martyrdom being so cruelly inflicted on Christians in Africa, the Middle East and some parts of Asia. 

It makes no difference whether the victims are Catholic, Copt, Orthodox or Protestant. Their blood is one and the same in their confession of Christ! The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard by everyone who can still distinguish between good and evil. All the more this cry must be heard by those who have the destiny of peoples in their hands. 

At this time we are filled with the Easter joy of the disciples to whom the women had brought the news that “Christ has risen from the dead”. This year, that joy – which never fades – is tinged with profound sorrow. Yet we know that the life we live in God’s merciful love is stronger than the pain all Christians feel, a pain shared by men and women of good will in all religious traditions. 

With heartfelt condolences I exchange with Your Holiness the embrace of peace in Christ Our Lord. 

From the Vatican, 20 April 2015

The People of the Cross

The icon here depicts the Coptic martyrs of Libya and was created by Egyptian American artist Tony Rezk. It appears on the website for the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles. 

A sermon preached on Ash Wednesday at Caravita, Rome 
by the Revd Marcus Walker, Associate Director of the Anglican Centre, Rome


The people of the cross.

Twenty-one young men, kneeling in the sand, facing the Mediterranean Sea.

Twenty-one young men, wearing orange jump-suits, each with a black-clad butcher behind him.

Twenty-one young men, all about to have their heads sawn off.

And, superimposed over this footage – professionally produced, it seems – are the words “The people of the cross – the followers of the hostile Egyptian church.”

I have not seen this footage. Those who have, talk of the terrible moment when all twenty-one start to be killed, simultaneously. There are hideous screams. This is not a clean death. This is not a quick death. But rising over the screams of pain are the cries of “Ya rabbi Yasou”, “My Lord Jesus.”

The people of the cross.

How true. How sickeningly, gruesomely, true.

Meant as an insult, like the inscription above the cross of Christ, it revealed a truth well beyond the meaning, and the understanding, of the murderers.

The people of the cross.

Not for them a cross of ash on their forehead, but the Way of the Cross itself.

Not for them the solemn reminder that they are dust and to dust they shall return; that reminder was dealt to them by a sword on a beach.

The reality of death; the reality of the cross: that is what today is about.

Remember O Adam, dust you were and to dust you shall return.

Those words will be used on us as we go up to be marked with our ashen cross. As we get marked as People of the Cross. As we thank God that we live this side of the Mediterranean Sea, where the greatest threat we face, today, is that someone might tell us later that we have a mark on our forehead.

We stand here today, possibly hungry after a bit of a fast, or gearing ourselves up for forty days without chocolates or cigarettes or being rude to the mother-in-law. Or maybe we’ve decided to “take something up” for Lent, being nice or going to the gym.

And we call this a season of fasting, and mark ourselves with an ashen cross, and remember that we are but dust, and… go on with our lives almost unchanged from last week.

We are people of the cross, but the cross is a more distant cross for us.

And yet, however weakly, we are indeed people of the cross.

But the cross, of course, is not just a symbol of death, but also the tree of life. When we’re marked with the sign of death and the dust of the grave, we are also being marked with the cross of the resurrection and the cross of our transformation.

This is the remarkable thing about today, and, indeed, the remarkable thing about our faith. We stand, on Ash Wednesday, at the foot of the grave, peering in and seeing our mortality, but from the very dust of that grave we have inscribed on our heads the hope of our immortality.

And the irony is, on this day of fasting and ashing, our readings very clearly flash up the warning signs that this is not enough. Not by any stretch. Rend your hearts and not your garments. Don’t prance about with ash on your heads looking miserable because you’re hungry.

No.

Repent.

That’s the message of today. Turn around.

Because the message of the cross, which seems foolishness to the Jihadists, is not one of death but one of transformed life. To turn, and be turned, slowly into the person God has called us to be; to turn and be turned, slowly, into the nature of God himself – into the nature of Love.

To forgive, and in forgiving, find forgiveness.

Because that is what we are, my friends: forgiving, forgiven, sinners.

And that is where the pain comes for us: to know the times we have wounded others, and to forgive, from the bottom of our hearts, the wounds we have received.

To turn ourselves to face Christ and to turn our hearts to forgive each other. This is the martyr’s crown that we seek to win, as Saint Augustine said to his flock when they expressed disappointment that the age of martyrdom was over. “Your feast day is not indeed in the calendar, but your crown is ready waiting for you”.

This might seem a little weak in the face of the real crowns won by real martyrs in Nigeria and Iraq and Libya and Syria and all across the world.

But this is what they have died for.

When those men cried our “Ya rabbi Yasou”, they were calling to the God of Love; the god of Forgiveness. Calling out because their journey of forgiving and being forgiven, of turning back to their Lord, was transcended by their terrible but heroic end.

Those men on that beach in Libya were not there for war or to convert others, but for jobs. Ordinary economic migrants hoping for a slightly better life, sending money back to their families at home. On that beach, however, they revealed themselves to be extraordinary for not being willing to renounce the God whom they love.

We are asked to open our hearts and let them be torn, but so often that is the harder task.

As we approach the ash today, let us lay in the grave our anger and resentments and feuds and jealousies, and raise from the grave a transformed nature: forgiven, forgiving, and facing Christ.

Amen.

Holy Martyrs of Egypt, pray for us and for your ISIS killers

“The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard,” said Pope [Francis] . It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants. They are Christians! Their blood is one and the same. Their blood confesses Christ.''

 As the world struggles to once more comprehend the savagery being inflicted on people through out the Middle East by people with a very warped understanding of the Islamic faith, Pope Francis reminds us all once more of the ecumenism of blood. No matter what our denomination those who die in odium fidei are witnesses for Christ - martyrs in the oldest understanding of the term.
 
Over at Patheos, Elizabeth Scalia names the martyrs who have been killed in the most recent tragedy. The naming and recollection of our martyrs goes right back to the beginning of the church with the account of the martyrdom of St Stephen in the Acts of the Apostles. The recollection of names ensures their memory and that their sacrifice and witness is not forgotten.  
 
Let us ask these new martyrs for their prayers:

+Holy Martyr Milad Makeen Zaky, pray for us, and for the whole world,
+Holy Martyr Abanub Ayad Atiya, pray for your ISIS murderers,
+Holy Martyr Maged Solaimain Shehata, pray for their salvation,
+Holy Martyr Yusuf Shukry Yunan, pray for the release of their all their captives,
+Holy Martyr Kirollos Shokry Fawzy, pray for all in the path of ISIS,
+Holy Martyr Bishoy Astafanus Kamel, pray for the displaced, for those made refugees by ISIS,
+Holy Martyr Somaily Astafanus Kamel, pray for the protection of our Holy Lands and our history,
+Holy Martyr Malak Ibrahim Sinweet, pray for those who act now in resistance against ISIS,
+Holy Martyr Tawadros Yusuf Tawadros, pray for those in immediate danger from forces of evil,
+Holy Martyr Girgis Milad Sinweet, pray for those infected with the virus of hatred and extremism,
+Holy Martyr Mina Fayez Aziz, pray for families being challenged, throughtout the world, by ISIS,
+Holy Martyr Hany Abdelmesih Salib, pray aid workers may draw together, unmolested, to give assistance,
+Holy Martyr Bishoy Adel Khalaf, pray for the targeted clergy and religious of the Near East churches,
+Holy Martyr Samuel Alham Wilson, pray for all people of good will, in every religion, every nation,
+Holy Martyr Whose name we do not know — you “Worker from Awr village” — pray for those in leadership, whose names we know all too well, that their motives may be purified of political intrigue, and for their salvation,
+Holy Martyr Ezat Bishri Naseef, pray for Jews, throughout the world, chosen of God and so despised,
+Holy Martyr Loqa Nagaty, pray for the “two lungs” of Christianity, East and West, to breath together,
+Holy Martyr Gaber Munir Adly, pray for the illumination of that which is All-Good,
+Holy Martyr Esam Badir Samir, pray that in beholding it, we will wish to serve it,
+Holy Martyr Malak Farag Abram, pray for the generation in power, that their egos may be put aside and their hearts might be opened to the Way, the Truth and the Life,
+Holy Martyr Sameh Salah Faruq, pray for the generations to come. 

O New Martyrs, through a malevolent force as old as Eden you now number among the ancient holy ones; keep us particularly in your prayers, as once again we are focused on the mysterious lands where humanity first came into being, and into knowing, and where all will finally be revealed. Pray that we may put aside all that is irrelevant to the moment and, looking forever to the East, prepare our spirits for the engagements into which we may be called, whether we live amid these places of ancient roads and portals, or in the most modern of dwellings. 

Mary, the God-bearer, pray for us,
Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us,
Saint John the Forerunner, pray for us,
All Holy Men and Women, pray for us.
Amen, Amen.

But it is not just these 21, we should remember all those both Christian and non-Christian who have died in this conflict.

ICN - Pope offers Mass for martyred Coptic Christians, condemns arms trade
Vatican Radio - Pope at Santa Marta: Slain because they were Christian
Vatican Radio - Egypt mourns Coptic Christians beheaded in Libya
Vatican Radio - Bishop Martinelli vows to stay in Libya with his flock
The Catholic Herald - After beheading Coptic Christians, Islamists say they will ‘conquer Rome’ next
The Daily Telegraph - The Middle East is red with the blood of Christians
Washington Post - Pope Francis denounces ISIS beheadings: ‘Their blood confesses Christ’
Aleteia - "Their Blood Cries Out To The Lord," Says Pope Francis of Beheaded Copts
The Independent - Egypt's Coptic Christians: Who are they – and why have then been targeted by Isis in beheading video?