Libya needs global solidarity after its devastating and deadly floods, Pope Francis says. There’s a desperate search for thousands of people missing after a powerful storm burst dams near the Mediterranean city of Derna on 10 September. That event unleashed a torrent of water that devastated at least a quarter of Derna’s buildings. Buildings along Read more
Pope Francis took eight children rescued from crisis-hit Libya for a ride in his popemobile Wednesday, the youngsters grinning and snapping photos as they whizzed round Saint Peter’s Square. The children, wearing T-shirts reading “Welcome, Protect, Promote, Integrate”, hailed from Syria, Nigeria and the Congo, and were airlifted out of Libya along with their families Read more
European Union (EU) leaders are “knowingly complicit in the torture and exploitation” of thousands of migrants and refugees from Libya. In a new report titled “Libya’s Dark Web of Collusion”, Amnesty International says the EU finances the Libyan coastguard and officials running the country’s detention camps to carry out torture and exploitation. At present, the Read more
Sobbing and shaking, Mohamed Abdallah tries to explain why he still wants to risk crossing the Mediterranean Sea in an inflatable boat. He sits in a migrant detention centre in Zawya, Libya, surrounded by hundreds of fellow asylum seekers who nearly died this week at sea. They survived only after being intercepted, detained and brought Read more
The murder of twenty one Christians by Islamic State in Libya brought condemnation from around the world. Their murder puts them in a long history of persecution of the Coptic Church. Martyrdom was not new to them or their people. For nearly two thousand years, their Church had prided itself as being the Church of Read more
Pope Francis has urged governments to help economic migrants travel to wealthy counties, to defeat the scourge of human trafficking. In a letter to a meeting of the International Labour Conference, the Pope wrote that mass migration is a “grave issue”. Pope Francis called for a “concerted effort . . . to encourage governments to Read more
The last weeks have seen a ghastly roll call of terror attacks in the obvious places: Syria, Libya, Iraq and Lebanon, as well as Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Pakistan. Also suffering are places where we have only in recent years seen such violence: Nigeria, and in many parts of central Africa, in Russia and across Read more
It is noteworthy how often the word citizen appears in contemporary Christian literature referring to or coming out of the Middle East. The lineamenta for the Synod of Bishops’ meeting in Rome in 2010 used the word several times. On June 23, 2011, the Holy Synod of Antioch (Greek Orthodox Patriarchate) called upon governments to Read more
The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church has questioned the motive behind supporting regime change in Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Libya, saying that Islamic fundamentalist regimes are “even worse” than authoritarian ones. Instilling democracy and a culture of freedom, said Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako, requires education and a sound strategy for the long term. But Read more
Sic transit Gloria Mundi; the gruesome death of the Muammar Gaddafi, the self styled “King of Kings”, is a dramatic demonstation that cruelty breeds cruelty. There is an ever present danger of becoming, in victory, the very thing we are seek to subdue; evil dies and rises again. It has left many people thinking “Even Read more