Rwanda’s genocide of 1994 resulted in over 800,000 deaths. Most were ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Their killers were extremist Hutus who were Catholic Church members. They planned, helped with and carried out the genocide. The Rwanda Conference of Catholic Bishops has just admitted and apologised for its role in the massacres. “We apologize for Read more
A young boy, 10 years old or so, faces the camera. Like many young boys, he is happy to be interviewed. This is war-torn Iraq, however, so he tells of the day ISIS came to his village. He starts to recount, horror after horror, what took place. It is hard to accept that one so Read more
Pope Francis condemned the horror of Auschwitz on Wednesday (Aug. 3), saying he felt the “presence of all the souls who passed through” the concentration camp that he visited during his trip to Poland last week. Speaking at his first weekly public audience at the Vatican since June, the pope reflected on his visit to Read more
Papal trips are important for many reasons, including their geopolitical significance, their meaning for relations with other Christian churches and other faiths, their impact on the local Catholic community, and the media coverage they generate. As a result, foreign trips are among the events every year in which a pope invests the most of himself Read more
Turkey’s deputy prime minister says Pope Francis reflects a “crusader mentality” for once again using the word “genocide” about a 1915 massacre in Armenia. During a visit to Armenia, Francis used the word in a speech. Francis departed from a carefully prepared text to use the word. As the prepared text indicated, Francis first referred Read more
This Sunday Armenians and people of good will around the world will commemorate the victims of the Armenian Genocide. A century ago millions of men, women and children – including Assyrians and Greeks – were brutally tortured and exterminated upon the direct order and plan of the Ottoman Turkish government, thereby emptying the region of Read more
For many of us who strive to seriously practice faith in Jesus Christ, and to extend that practice out into the marketplace, the political square and society at large, persecution rarely means more than being ridiculed, verbally harassed, and to a certain degree socially and politically marginalized. But for so many other Christians throughout the Read more
Although no date has been set, a Vatican spokesman confirmed Pope Francis is considering a trip to Armenia during the second half of June, a year after causing a diplomatic incident by calling the Ottoman-era slaughter of Armenians in the early 1900s a genocide. Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said the pope’s itinerary hasn’t been Read more
A Catholic report has identified a slow motion genocide happening in West Papua amid a growing Islamisation of the area. The report was compiled by the Brisbane Catholic Justice and Peace Commission’s Shadow Human Rights Fact Finding Mission to West Papua. It came after a visit to West Papua last month by Josephite Sr Susan Read more
The European Parliament has recognised as genocide the Islamic State’s killing of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East. This is the first time the European Parliament has acknowledged an ongoing conflict as genocide. Lars Adaktusson, the Swedish MEP who tabled the resolution, said the significance of the move is the obligations that Read more