International News

News from outside of Canada.

German archdiocese plans new residents for old abbey: refugees

March 5, 2015

BEUERBERG, Germany - Cold winter light is streaming through the ancient windows of Beuerberg Abbey. It plays on the wood of the empty choir stalls, shimmers on the bronze hand bell of the prioress. Everything is quiet and ready for the next prayer.

Cardinal Dolan: Islamic State is Muslim like IRA was Catholic

March 4, 2015

NEW YORK - Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said Islamic State militants terrorizing the Middle East are a distortion of “genuine” Islam much as the Irish Republican Army was a “perversion” of Catholicism.

CRS rejects groups' assertions it supplied birth control in Kenya

March 4, 2015

WASHINGTON - Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' overseas relief and development agency, called assertions that it had supplied birth control in Kenya "misleading, exaggerated and untrue."

21 slain Egyptian Copt martyrs had their cross to bear

March 4, 2015

MONTREAL - Christians have always faced various degrees of persecution through the centuries and should always be prepared to wear “the crown of martyrdom,” a Coptic leader in Montreal told his congregation Feb. 28 during a memorial Mass honouring 21 Egyptians who were beheaded on a beach in Libya by jihadists in mid-February.

Aid official says Gazans have lost hope, situation worse than during war

March 3, 2015

JERUSALEM - Six months after the end of the most recent war in Gaza, there is still a "grave humanitarian crisis" in the narrow strip wedged between the Egyptian and Israeli borders, where more than 1.8 million Palestinians live closed off to the world because of an international embargo.

U.S. priest to Irish safeguarding meeting: Church not haven for abusers

March 3, 2015

ATHLONE, Ireland - The Catholic Church is "no longer a safe haven for child abusers," said a top priest psychologist who advises the U.S. bishops on child sexual abuse.

Nigerian bishops criticize Boko Haram's use of kids as suicide bombers

March 2, 2015

LAGOS, Nigeria - Nigeria's bishops criticized Boko Haram insurgents' use of children to commit crimes such as suicide bombings.

Remedy against violence is seeing differences as beneficial, says Pope

March 2, 2015

VATICAN CITY - The best antidote to violence is teaching people to discover and accept differences as being valuable, Pope Francis told the bishops of North Africa.

Catholic aid group channels money to help Christians displaced in Syria

March 2, 2015

BEIRUT - A pontifical aid organization has begun sending aid to families who fled their homes when Islamic State militants raided a cluster of Assyrian Christian villages on the Khabur River in northeast Syria.

19 Assyrian Christians released, but many concerned for more than 200 said to be held captive

March 2, 2015

AMMAN, Jordan - Christians in the Middle East welcomed the release of nearly 20 Assyrian Christians abducted by Islamic State militants in northeastern Syria, but expressed concern that more than 200 others remained in captivity.