News/International

BEIRUT - Church aid workers scrambled to find housing for hundreds of Syrian refugees who have fled to neighboring Lebanon because of ongoing violence between Syrian forces and armed rebels.

About 200 families -- more than 1,000 people overall -- made their way to the border town of Qaa in the Bekaa Valley in northern Lebanon March 5 and were struggling in the region's near-freezing temperatures.

Father Simon Faddoul, president of Caritas Lebanon, told Catholic News Service March 6 that "women and children and the elderly are coming out in the cold, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, to seek safety."

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI urged Christians in the Middle East not to lose hope despite the serious difficulties they face.

"I extend my prayerful thoughts to the regions in the Middle East, encouraging all the priests and faithful to persevere with hope through the serious suffering that afflicts these beloved people," he said.

The Pope made his remarks when he greeted Armenian Patriarch Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni of Beirut and Armenian bishops from around the world attending their synod in Rome.

HENRYVILLE, Ind. - As one of the few buildings in town to come through intense storms March 2 nearly intact, St. Francis Xavier Church has become a natural staging area for relief efforts, community organizing and prayer.

Four days after a devastating tornado hit, volunteers and professionals used St. Xavier, the nearby Henryville Community Church and a community center as bases for people trying to put their lives back together.

The town of about 1,600 was one of several in the region to be largely destroyed by a wave of storms that created dozens of tornadoes across 11 states March 2 and 3.

VATICAN CITY - Terrorist attacks on Christians in Africa, the Middle East and Asia tripled in a seven-year period, a Vatican official told a U.N. meeting.

Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, the Holy See's permanent observer to U.N. offices in Geneva, told the U.N. Human Rights Council that while Christians are not the only victims, attacks on them in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia "increased 309 percent between 2003 and 2010." He did not offer any specific numbers.

MEXICO CITY - Pope Benedict XVI might broach the issue of politics during his upcoming visit in Mexico, potentially provoking controversy in a country with a long history of sour church-state relations.

The Archdiocese of Mexico City released an editorial March 4, saying the pontiff could speak on any topic, including politics and social issues affecting country.

VATICAN CITY - A Catholic church where Sunday Massgoers were just leaving was among dozens of buildings flattened by a series of explosions triggered by a fire at a military munitions depot in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.

Government officials suspect a short-circuit set off the fire at the military storage facility early March 4, causing huge fires and a series of explosions that devastated Mpila, a neighborhood on the eastern edge of Brazzaville, causing the collapse of several buildings, including St. Louis Catholic Church, according to news reports.

ANTAKYA, Turkey - Masked gunmen stormed the Syrian desert monastery of Deir Mar Musa, about 50 miles southwest of Homs, destroying property and briefly holding its inhabitants captive.

The monastery's website reported March 1 that on Feb. 22, approximately 30 armed men infiltrated the hillside monastery, holding community members at gunpoint as they searched for weapons and money.

Dating from the sixth century, Mar Musa was re-established by an Italian Jesuit priest in the early 1980s. The monastery and its church are staffed with Catholic and Orthodox nuns and priests, and the compound has become a center for Muslim-Christian interfaith dialogue.

RIDGWAY, Ill - Elizabeth Schmitt, who planned to get married in May at St. Joseph Church in Ridgway, never imagined she would be picking up debris from the gothic church that was completely destroyed in the Feb. 29 tornado.

Tornadoes swept through parts of the Midwest and the South, killing at least a dozen people and injuring more than 100 in Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee.

"It gives a whole new meaning to destruction," Schmitt said as she pulled on her gloves to continue cleaning up the church property.

WASHINGTON - U.S. church leaders pledged to redouble efforts to support religious freedom after the Senate voted to table the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act March 1.

Introduced as an amendment to a highway funding bill, the bill was tabled by a 51-48 vote, effectively killing it.

Known as the Blunt amendment, so-named because its chief sponsor was Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the bill was defeated largely along party lines. It drew the support of three Democratic senators, Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine was the lone Republican to vote against the measure.

JERUSALEM (CNS) -- At the entrance to St. Saviour Church, Aloysious Leone and women in traditional Indian dress gathered around Trivandrum Archbishop Mari Soosa Pakiam to ask his blessing and kiss his ring.

Leone, 36, a Catholic from southern India, was among about 150 Indian Catholics who braved rain and freezing temperatures to attend a Mass of thanksgiving with church leaders from their country at Jerusalem's St. Saviour Church.

"It is very special to have our cardinals and priests here and be able to attend a Mass with them," he said.