The Founder of the Synagogue Church of All Nations, Temitope Joshua, better known as Prophet TB Joshua, died on the way to the hospital, SaharaReporters has gathered.

“He conducted a service yesterday evening. He had been sick for two days. He decided to go to the hospital after the evening programme. He died on the way to the hospital,” a source told Saharareporters.

The church and his family have not officially announced his death. He was 57. Joshua was born on June 12, 1963, in Arigidi,  Akoko axis of Ondo State. Plans were underway for his 58th birthday, which is six days away. 

News of his demise became a trend on social media in the early hours of Sunday as many Nigerians took turns to mourn the late prophet.

The cause of his death was not immediately disclosed, but sources told Saharareporters he fell ill two days ago. His body is believed to have been deposited at General Hospital in Isolo, Lagos.

TB Joshua’s megachurch runs the popular Emmanuel TV television station from Lagos, followed by many Christians worldwide.

Joshua is famous across Africa, Europe and America. His YouTube channel, Emmanuel TV, had over 1,000,000 subscribers and was the world’s most viewed Christian ministry on the platform before it was suspended.

A rights group had filed a complaint after reviewing videos showing the preacher conducting prayers to “cure” gay people.

He is well known for his controversial prophecies such as the Ghana terror attack, US presidential election, coronavirus and his influence in African politics. He recently predicted Nigeria would remain one despite instability in different parts of the country.

He recently wrote on his Facebook page about plans to celebrate his 58th birthday.

He said, “As things stand, you may have realised it will not be easy for me to celebrate my birthday under the present circumstances. Some of the people who want to come are troubled by the situation all over the world. We see their fear and their worry. I feel their pain; I feel their worry.

“Therefore, let us dedicate this day to prayer and fasting. Don’t forget the needy. By the grace of God, more birthdays are ahead. God bless you! Emmanuel. Jesus is Lord! Happy Birthday.” 

Source: Sahara Reporters

Pope Francis expressed his pleasure Wednesday at being once again among his flock as he delivered his weekly general audience in public for the first time in six months.

He greeted a baby, signed a book, donned a hat someone gave him and chatted with children who had painted him pictures as the faithful — all in masks, unlike the vaccinated pontiff — lined up to greet him.

“I am happy to resume this face to face because I tell you one thing — it is not nice to talk in front of nothing, in front of a camera,” Francis told them as they sat on socially-distanced chairs to listen to his audience in the San Damaso Courtyard at the Vatican.

The pope abandoned his Wednesday public audiences when coronavirus swept across Italy early last year, instead delivering them via video link from the Apostolic Library.

They resumed in September and October — not in St Peter’s Square but in the courtyard with a limited crowd of 500 — only to stop once again due to a fresh wave of infections.

The courtyard was not full Wednesday, but the 300 or so people who came expressed their joy at seeing the pope up close.

There was a cheer when he arrived inside the courtyard in a blue Ford. “Pope Francis, we’re with you!” they shouted, standing on chairs to get a better view as he passed by.

“It was lovely, to see him so close — he wasn’t in a hurry, he took his time,” said a nun from Rome who gave her name as Helene.

“He was happy to be with the people.”

Thomas Viallon, 34, from Paris, added: “It was the first time weve seen the pope. We were really close. He seemed very close to the people.”

Source: AFP

Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai, Light of Reason, Light of Faith: Joseph Ratzinger and the German Enlightenment (Indiana: ST. Augustine’s Press, 2021). 403 pp. $45, ISBN 9781587314667.

In all epochs of the Church’s life, Christian apologists and intellectuals have consistently responded to challenges and questions posed to the faith of the Church.  In the early Church, the teachings of Gnostics and heretics such as Marcion, Celsus, and Donatus Magnus were countered by authentic orthodox Christian apologies by Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine of Hippo, inter alia. The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, triggered by Martin Luther’s “95 Theses” against the Catholic Church on October 31, 1517, caused great turmoil in the Church and beyond. By placing the Holy Bible and Aquinas’ Summa Theologica on an altar in Trent (1545-1563), the Council Fathers offered a systematic response to the theological innovations championed by Luther and other high-voltage reformers. In the Counter-Reformation Church, the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and the Dominicans intellectually engaged the propositions of the reformers. It was therefore only right for one of the most articulate teachers of the faith in the person of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI to consistently engage the Enlightenment, especially the German Enlightenment, whose legacy is only becoming more disturbing, especially in the contemporary Western world.

Fr. Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai’s master class, Light of Reason, Light of Faith: Joseph Ratzinger and the German Enlightenment, offers a critically fascinating account of Ratzinger’s engagement with the German strand of the Enlightenment – the Aufklärung. “Reason” was the prime currency of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment movement that swept across Europe. That is why its motto was “dare to use your reason” (Sapare Aude). As a result, Enlightenment figures such as René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Friedrich Nietzsche callously attempted to explain the faith of the Church from a purely rationalistic way. They attacked the revealed faith of the Church and proposed a speculative rational faith. Revealed faith was seen as a hindrance to human freedom, especially considering that liberté was one of the slogans of the French Revolution. Fr. Maurice cogently examines the thoughts of the leading Enlightenment figures vis-à-vis Ratzinger’s responses over more than four decades to some of their claims. Some of the propositions enunciated by the Enlightenment are still of grave concern to the Church today. For instance, Immanuel Kant places God in the realm of the noumena because, according to him, God’s existence cannot be justified based on reason. Kant rejects the possibility of the existence of God under the notion that God is not accessible to human beings. Since the noumena cannot be accessed through theoretical reason, Kant rejects the demonstration of God’s existence by speculative or theoretical reasoning. Through his Categorical Imperatives, Kant sees a pathway through which humankind can act and subsist morally in a way that neither God nor religion is required (p.334).

Friedrich Nietzsche postulated the “death of God.” According to Hegel, the enlightenment motto “dare to use your reason” meant use your reason to arrive at the consciousness of God inside the human person. For Hegel, God emerges when the self is no longer antithetical to/with the Other. Hegel calls this process absolute knowing. This absolute knowing or absolute idea is God (p.193). God is not extrinsic to the human being. Such philosophical speculations about God and the faith of the Church are of urgent concern to Joseph Ratzinger. This is why Fr. Maurice writes, “To Ratzinger, the Aufklärung marked an enduring criticism of revealed faith, a critique that the Church must continue to engage and respond to, for it touched on the fundamental relationship between faith and reason, between the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the God of the philosophers” (p.1). Being one of the most theologically and philosophically savvy popes in the history of the Church, Ratzinger understands fully well the enduring legacy of the Aufklärung in the Western world today. The atheism, secularism, indifference, and hostility toward Christianity in large sectors of the Western world today definitely trace their origins to the Enlightenment movement of the eighteenth century. The author acknowledges this fact when he writes: “To Benedict, therefore, the criticisms meted against Christianity by the Aufklärung are not dated, but continue to be relevant, especially given the pervasive influence of the Aufklärung in the post-Aufklärung culture, as seen in the anonymous Kantians, Hegelians, Feuerbachians, and Nietzscheans, even in the pews” (p.2). It is partly due to the Aufklärung that football stadia such as the Emirates Stadium, Santiago Bernabéu, Allianz Arena, Anfield, and Old Trafford are now the new religious basilicas in the West. Therefore, engaging the Enlightenment and her offshoots is an urgent pastoral necessity for Joseph Ratzinger. This is why in her book blurb, the distinguished law professor and diplomat Mary Ann Glendon points out that, “No pope has ever spoken so frequently or fulsomely of the legacy of the Enlightenment as has Pope Benedict XVI.”

Being a considerate person, Joseph Ratzinger repeatedly stressed and highlighted the positives of the Enlightenment thought. Fr. Maurice writes, “Ratzinger is not interested in rolling back the objectively good gains of the Aufklärung, such as the value of human rationality in moral discernment” (p.4). However, the overarching aim of Ratzinger’s dialogue with the Enlightenment is to reconcile the God of the philosophers and the God of faith (p.91). It is to harness and use the Aufklärung in explicating the faith of the Church. In A Turning Point for Europe? (1991), Joseph Ratzinger succinctly explained the raison d’être for his sustained engagement with the Aufklärung, “One must not only recognize the positive elements of the Aufklärung and contemporary culture, but must continue to bring the insights of faith, revealed faith, to bear on the present order to open the path to the future” (p.23). Unlike Tertullian, Ratzinger cherished a dance between Athens and Jerusalem/faith and reason.

Fr. Maurice’s book is a veritable contribution to understanding the theology of Joseph Ratzinger and the Enlightenment movement. The work truly fills some regrettable gaps in the study of the theology of Ratzinger. In the Foreword to the book, Emery de Gaál asserts, “preoccupation with Aufklärung is an underlying, constantly recurring sostenuto and leitmotif in Ratzinger’s thinking” (x). However, he rightly points out that the term is not treated by secondary literature on Ratzinger and it is not even listed as an entry in the anthology of important terms in Ratzinger’s theology Ratzinger/Benedikt XVI, Kleines ABC des Glaubens. Light of Reason, Light of Faith fills this lacuna (x-xi).

Light of Reason, Light of Faith is a well-researched, picturesque, written book. It is a book written by someone who genuinely and passionately loves his subject matter. The author is thoroughly immersed in the profound encounter between a living “Doctor of the Church” and the Aufklärung and its offshoots. It is a culmination of over two decades of research, scholarship, and reflection on the path of the author. The author first mentioned his love and admiration of the theology Joseph Ratzinger to me in the streets of Jinja, Uganda in 2004, “Giovanni, I really love Ratzinger’s theology of creation”. Our discussion of this subject matter continued in Nairobi, Kenya (2006-2009) and in Boston (2018-). Being an academic myself, I have not come across a personal library with the amount of resources in Ratzingerian theology and Enlightenment figures like that of the author. As a result, the amount of secondary literature used in the book is impressive. As the renowned Professor Peter Kreeft mentions in his book blurb, “Like Ratzinger himself, Father Agbaw-Ebai’s writing is dense and deep but well worth the effort required to engage it.”

By John Tanyi (Church Historian)

The Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday clarified that the Catholic Church does not have the power to give liturgical blessings of homosexual unions.

Answering the question “does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?,” the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded, “negative.”

In an accompanying note, the doctrine office explained that blessings are sacramentals, and “consequently, in order to conform with the nature of sacramentals, when a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord.”

“Therefore, only those realities which are in themselves ordered to serve those ends are congruent with the essence of the blessing imparted by the Church,” the CDF said.

“For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”

The ruling and note were approved for publication by Pope Francis and signed by CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria and secretary Archbishop Giacomo Morandi.

The CDF’s note did not state the origin of the dubium submitted to the doctrinal office, but noted that “in some ecclesial contexts, plans and proposals for blessings of unions of persons of the same sex are being advanced.”

In recent years, German bishops in particular have been increasingly outspoken in demanding “discussions about an opening” towards acceptance of practiced homosexuality and the blessing of homosexual unions in the Church.

Following consultations in Berlin in late 2019, the chairman of the marriage and family commission of the German bishops’ conference declared that the German bishops agreed that homosexuality was a “normal form” of human sexual identity.

The topic also plays a central role in one of four forums that constitute the controversial “Synodal Process” underway in Germany.

The CDF explained in 2003 that “the Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”

German bishops who have publicly voiced support for the blessing of same-sex unions in the Catholic Church include Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, and Bishop Heinrich Timmerervers of Dresden-Meißen.

Bishop Bätzing, the president of the German bishops’ conference, in December 2020 called for changes to the section on homosexuality in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Expressing openness to blessings of homosexual unions, he said, “we need solutions for this.”

On Feb. 23, Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz defended his support for a book of blessings and rites for homosexual unions. The book followed a May 2020 publication from Austria about how same-sex couples might receive a formal, liturgical blessing. Kohlgraf suggested that Catholics with homosexual inclinations cannot all be expected to live chastely.

The call for liturgical blessings of same-sex unions is part of a wider push by some German bishops to change the Church’s teaching on a number of issues, including on the sacraments of priestly ordination and marriage.

CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German partner agency, reported that Bishop Bätzing has suggested that the Vatican Synod of Bishops on synodality, scheduled for October 2022, could help implement German “Synodal Way” resolutions not only in Germany, but throughout the Catholic Church.

Source: National Catholic Register

Cardinal Robert Sarah on Wednesday rejected claims that he and Pope Francis are enemies, in his first interview since stepping down from his Vatican post.

In an interview with an Italian newspaper published March 10, the Guinean cardinal said that he had “tried to be a loyal, obedient, and humble servant of the truth of the Gospel.”

“Even though some journalists continually repeat the same nonsense,” he told Il Foglio, “I have never opposed the pope.”

An English translation of the cardinal’s interview was published on Wednesday by the National Catholic Register.

On Feb. 20, Pope Francis accepted Cardinal Sarah’s resignation as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Sarah had submitted his resignation to the pope when he turned 75 in June 2020, as Church norms dictate.

Before his resignation, Sarah was the most senior African prelate at the Vatican, appointed head of the liturgy department by Pope Francis in November 2014.

Sarah said in his interview that when Pope Francis told him that he had decided to accept the resignation, “I immediately replied that I was happy and grateful for his decision.”

“I am happy and proud to have served three popes — St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis — in the Roman Curia for more than 20 years,” the cardinal continued.

“Some people insinuate without reason or even being able to provide concrete and credible proof that we were enemies, it’s not true! Pope Francis likes frankness. We have always worked together with simplicity, despite the fantasies of journalists,” he said.

Sarah criticized the idea that his former role leading the Congregation for Divine Worship was “an honorary position, but of little importance.”

“I believe that the responsibility for the liturgy puts us at the heart of the Church, of her raison d’être. The Church is neither an administration nor a human institution. The Church mysteriously prolongs Christ’s presence on earth,” he said.

Sarah quoted the Second Vatican Council document Sacrosanctum concilium, which says that the liturgy is “a sacred action surpassing all others” and “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows.”

“The Church exists to give men to God and to give God to men,” Sarah explained. “This is precisely the role of the liturgy: to worship God and to communicate divine grace to souls. When the liturgy is sick, the whole Church is in danger because her relationship with God is not only weakened but deeply damaged.”

He recalled Benedict XVI’s comment that the crisis of the Church is “essentially a crisis of the liturgy because it is a crisis of the relationship with God.”

“If God is not at the center of the Church’s life, then she is in danger of death,” the cardinal said.

Sarah also emphasized that the liturgy is about God, not the community or individual. This reality, he said, is expressed well when the liturgy is said ad orientem, meaning with the priest facing the altar, or liturgical East, rather than the people.

The cardinal also explained why he thought that silence was important in the liturgy.

“When man remains silent, he leaves a place for God,” he said. “On the contrary, when the liturgy becomes chatty, it forgets that the cross is its center, it organizes itself around the microphone.”

He said these questions are crucial, “because they determine the place we give to God,” and lamented that they had become “ideological.”

Factional struggles within the Church are a source of suffering for him, he said. “Too often we act as if everything is a question of politics, power, influence and the unjustified imposition of a hermeneutic of Vatican II that totally breaks and is irreversibly at odds with Tradition.”

He declared it “false” that he was opposed to the Second Vatican Council because he spoke of a sense of the sacred in the liturgy.

“I don’t believe that the struggle between progressives and conservatives has any meaning in the Church. These categories are political and ideological,” he said, adding that “the Church is not a field of political struggle.”

“The only thing that counts is to seek God ever more deeply, to meet him there and humbly kneel down to adore him.”

It was unfortunate, Cardinal Sarah said, that there are “ideologues” who set the pre-Council Church against the post-Council Church.

According to the cardinal, these people “are dividers; they are doing the work of the devil.”

“The Church is one, without rupture, without changing course, because her Founder ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,’” he said. “She goes towards God, she directs us towards him. From the profession of faith of St. Peter to Pope Francis through Vatican II, the Church turns us towards Christ.”

Now that he is retired, Sarah said that he intended to continue working and was happy to have more time to pray and read.

“I will continue to write, to speak, to travel. Here in Rome, I continue to receive priests and faithful from all over the world,” he said.

Sarah will continue to serve as a member of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, where he said he saw “with immense joy how the Church is bursting with holiness.”

“More than ever the Church needs bishops who speak clearly, free and faithful to Jesus Christ and to the doctrinal and moral teachings of his Gospel,” he said. “I intend to continue this mission and even amplify it.”

Source: Catholic News Agency

A religious sister in northern Burma knelt before police on Monday, begging them not to use violent force against protestors.

In avideo, Sr. Ann Rose Nu Tawng, a member of the Sisters of St. Francis Xavier, can be seen speaking March 8 to two kneeling police officers in the city of Myitkyina, the capital of Burma’s northern Kachin State.

Speaking to Reuters, Tawng said: “I begged them not to hurt the protesters, but to treat them kindly, like family members.”

She said that senior officers had told her they were just clearing the street. In the video, the sister and one policeman can be seen touching their foreheads to the ground.

“I begged them not to shoot the children,” she said.

But soon after, “we heard loud gunshots and saw that a young kid’s head had exploded, and there was a river of blood on the street,” she recounted.

Tawng and other witnesses said that at least two protestors were killed and several injured in clashes with police.

The religious sister tried to bring some of the victims to a clinic she runs in the town but was blinded by tear gas.

“Our clinic floor became a sea of blood,” she said. “We need to value life. It made me feel so sad.”

Catholic nuns from a variety of communities in Burma have marched the streets, praying for the protestors and offering them food, according to UCA News. Amid protests in Myitkyina, the sisters hung signs saying “No to dictatorship” and “Listen to the voices of people” outside of their convent.

Burma, also known as Myanmar, is a country in Southeast Asia with a population of 54 million people. Both the democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and president Win Myint were detained by members of the military in the early hours of Feb. 1, after the military disputed the results of the 2020 election. The army general Min Aung Hlaing now leads the country.

According to an advocacy group, more than 60 people have died and over 1,800 have been detained as police crack down on protests against the Feb. 1 military coup.

Sr. Ann Rose Nu Tawng was also photographed kneeling before a line of advancing police officers late last month.

L’Osservatore Romanosaidthat the she ran out into the street on Feb. 28 as police fired tear gas at protesters.

“On her knees, she raised her hands to God and begged: ‘Don’t shoot, don’t kill innocents. If you want, hit me,’” the newspaper reported, adding that the police halted their advance.

Source: Catholic News Agency

Pope Francis landed in Iraq Friday to begin his historic trip to the war-battered country, defying security fears and the pandemic to comfort one of the world’s oldest and most persecuted Christian communities.

The pope, who wore a mask during the flight, kept it on as he descended the stairs to the tarmac and was greeted by two masked children in traditional dress.

A red carpet was rolled out on the tarmac at Baghdad’s international airport with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on hand to greet him.

The 84-year-old, who said he is making his first-ever papal visit to Iraq as a “pilgrim of peace,” will also reach out to Shiite Muslims when he meets Iraq’s top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. 

The four-day journey is the pope’s first abroad since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which left the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics saying he felt “caged” inside the Vatican.

While Francis has been vaccinated, Iraq has been gripped by a second wave with a record of over 5,000 new cases a day, prompting authorities to impose full lockdowns during the pontiff’s visit.

Security was tight in Iraq, a country that is still hunting for Islamic State (IS) group sleeper cells after years of war and insurgency. Only days ago, a barrage of rockets ploughed into a military base hosting US troops.

Hundreds of people had gathered along the airport road with hopes of catching a glimpse of the pope’s plane touching down.

Iraqis were keen to welcome him and the global attention his visit will bring, with banners and posters hanging high in central Baghdad, and billboards depicting Francis with the slogan “We are all Brothers” decorating the main thoroughfare.

Services in ravaged churches, refurbished stadiums

Francis will preside over a half-dozen services in ravaged churches, refurbished stadiums and remote desert locations, where attendance will be limited to allow for social distancing.

Inside the country, he will travel more than 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) by plane and helicopter, flying over areas where security forces are still battling IS remnants.

For shorter trips, Francis will take an armoured car on freshly paved roads that will be lined with flowers and posters welcoming the leader known here as “Baba Al-Vatican”.

The pope’s visit has deeply touched Iraq’s Christians, whose numbers have collapsed over years of persecution and sectarian violence, from 1.5 million in 2003 to fewer than 400,000 today.

“We’re hoping the pope will explain to the government that it needs to help its people,” a Christian from Iraq’s north, Saad al-Rassam, told AFP. “We have suffered so much, we need the support.”  

‘Too many martyrs’

The first day of the pope’s ambitious itinerary will see him meet government officials and clerics in the capital Baghdad, including at the Our Lady of Salvation church, where a jihadist attack left dozens dead in 2010.

He will also visit the northern province of Nineveh, where in 2014 IS jihadists forced minorities to either flee, convert to Islam or be put to death.

“People had only a few minutes to decide if they wanted to leave or be decapitated,” recalled Karam Qacha, a Chaldean Catholic priest in Nineveh.

“We left everything — except our faith.”

Some 100,000 Christians — around half of those who lived in the province — fled, of whom just 36,000 have returned, according to Catholic charity “Aid to the Church in Need”.

Among the returnees, a third have said they want to leave again in coming years, dismayed by Iraq’s rampant corruption, persecution and poverty, which now affects 40 percent of the population.

The exodus is a loss for all of Iraq, said Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, who heads the Vatican’s Congregation for the Oriental Churches and will accompany the pope to Iraq.

“A Middle East without Christians is like trying to make bread with flour, but no yeast or salt,” he said.

The visit aims not only to encourage Christians to stay in their homeland, but even prompt some emigres to return from nearby Lebanon and Jordan, or further afield like Canada and Australia.

In a video address ahead of the trip, Francis evoked “the wounds of loved ones left behind and homes abandoned,” saying there had been “too many martyrs” in Iraq.

“I come as a pilgrim, a penitent pilgrim to implore forgiveness and reconciliation from the Lord after years of war and terrorism.”               

‘Minarets and church bells’

The pope has insisted on the visit despite resurging violence.

Rocket attacks across the country have left three people dead in recent weeks, including a US contractor who died Wednesday.

Francis’ determination to travel to areas long shunned by foreign dignitaries has impressed many in Iraq — as has his planned meeting with Sistani, 90, the top authority for Iraq’s Shiites.

A highly reclusive figure who rarely accepts visitors, Sistani will make an exception to host Francis at his humble home in the shrine city of Najaf on Saturday.

Banners all over Najaf have celebrated “the historic encounter, between the minarets and the church bells”.

Francis, a major supporter of inter-religious dialogue, will afterwards head to the desert site of Ur, where Abraham is thought to have been born.

There, he will host an interfaith service that will bring together not only the Abrahamic religions but also include followers of other beliefs, including Yazidis and Sabeans.

The Pope’s programme in Iraq includes visits to the cities of Baghdad, Najaf, Ur, Mosul, Qaraqosh and Erbil. He will traverse some 1,445 km in a country where Iraqi-American tensions still linger and where more recently the scourge of Covid-19 has led to record numbers of infections.

Pope Francis will travel in an armoured car to avoid the customary crowds that flock to catch a glimpse of the leader of the Catholic Church. At times he will be required to travel either by helicopter or plane over areas where jihadists belonging to the Islamic State group are still present.

Proceedings kick off Friday with a speech to Iraqi leaders in Baghdad, addressing the security and economic difficulties confronting Iraq’s 40 million people. The pope is also expected to mention the persecution of the country’s Christian minority.

On Saturday he will visit the holy city of Najaf, where he will be hosted by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highest authority for many Shiites in Iraq and the world.

The pope will make a trip to the ancient city of Ur, the birthplace, according to the Bible, of the prophet Abraham, a figure common to the three monotheistic religions. There he will pray with Muslims, Yazidis and Sanaeans (pre-Christian monotheisms).

Francis will continue his journey on Sunday in the province of Nineveh (northern Iraq), the cradle of Iraqi Christians. He will then head to Mosul and Qaraqoch, two cities marked by the destruction of the Islamic extremists.

The pontiff will conclude his tour by presiding over an open-air Mass on Sunday in the presence of thousands of Christians in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. This Kurdish Muslim stronghold has offered refuge to hundreds of thousands of Christians, Yazidis and Muslims who fled the atrocities of the Islamic State group.

(FRANCE 24 with AP and REUTERS)

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday braved temperatures well below freezing to take a bare-chested dip into icy water in an Orthodox ritual marking the baptism of Jesus.

The Russian leader shed a thick coat and boots, as temperatures hovered at -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit) and stepped into a pool surrounded by snow and facing a large cross made of ice outside Moscow.

The 68-year-old Russian leader immersed himself three times while crossing himself, in line with tradition.

The Kremlin said in a statement that the tradition “celebrates one of the main Christian holidays — the baptism of the Lord.”

Every year on January 19, tens of thousands of Orthodox believers mark Epiphany by dunking themselves in ponds or rivers.

Russian authorities install wooden steps to facilitate access for worshippers throughout the country wishing to commemorate the baptism of Jesus Christ.

While the ritual has become popular among Russian politicians and even foreign diplomats, the Orthodox Church has said the event is not actually a canonical tradition and dismiss it as a fad.

Source: AFP

Both Pope Francis and his predecessor, former pope Benedict XVI, have received the coronavirus vaccine, the Vatican said on Thursday.

The Argentine pontiff, 84, has previously spoken of the importance of the jab in the fight against Covid-19, which has severely curtailed his own love of being among his flock.

Under the Vatican’s vaccination programme launched Wednesday, “the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine has been administered to Pope Francis and the Pope Emeritus,” spokesman Matteo Bruni said.

It had already been reported that Francis, 84, had received the jab on Wednesday, but officials declined to confirm the news.

The Vatican News portal said Benedict, 93, was given a dose on Thursday morning.

The former pontiff, who stepped down in 2013, lives in a converted monastery in the Vatican gardens.

In an interview broadcast at the weekend, Francis urged people to get the vaccine.

“There is a suicidal denial which I cannot explain, but today we have to get vaccinated,” he told Canale 5.

The Vatican in December said it was “morally acceptable” for Catholics even where the vaccines had been developed using cell lines from aborted foetuses.

In his Christmas message last year, Francis also added his voice to calls for vaccines to be available across the globe, not just in rich countries.

He urged “vaccines for all, especially the most vulnerable and most in need in all regions of the planet”.

– Iraq trip in doubt –

The Argentine has been forced to limit his interaction with the public since the virus first swept Italy early last year, notably switching his weekly Wednesday audiences online.

Francis conceded at the weekend that his historic trip to Iraq planned for March, the first visit by a pope to the Middle Eastern country, could be in doubt.

Recalling how he was forced to cancel his foreign trips last year due to the pandemic, he said: “I don’t know if the upcoming trip to Iraq will happen.”

He added: “I cannot in all conscience encourage gatherings.”

There are serious concerns about how Francis would cope if he himself became infected, given both his age and his history of lung problems.

The pope almost died when he was 21 after developing pleurisy, according to biographer Austen Ivereigh, and had part of one of his lungs removed.

He recalled the incident in a recent book, “Let Us Dream”, saying: “I have some sense of how people with coronavirus feel as they struggle to breathe on ventilators.”

Media reports suggested Pope Francis received the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine, which was authorised for use in the European Union on December 21.

Source: AFP

Bethlehem on Thursday ushered in Christmas Eve with a stream of joyous marching bands and the triumphant arrival of the top Catholic clergyman in the Holy Land, but few people were there to greet them as the coronavirus pandemic and a strict lockdown dampened celebrations in the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

Similar subdued scenes were repeated across the world as the festive family gatherings and packed prayers that typically mark the holiday were scaled back or canceled altogether.

On Christmas Eve in Italy, church bells rang earlier than usual. The Italian government’s 10 pm curfew prompted pastors to move up services, with “Midnight” Mass starting Thursday evening in some churches as early as a couple hours after dark. Pope Francis, who has said people “must obey” civil authorities’ measures to fight the spread of Covid-19, fell in line. This year, the Christmas vigil Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica was moved up from 9:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Normally, seats at the vigil Mass are quickly snapped up, by Romans and by tourists, but the pandemic has reduced tourists in Italy to a trickle. In keeping with social distancing measures, barely 200 faithful — instead of several thousand — spaced out in the basilica’s pews and wearing masks, attended Francis’ celebration of the Mass. A row of fiery red poinsettia plants warmly contrasted with the sumptuous cold marble of the basilica.

Francis in his homily offered reflections on Christmas’ significance. “We often hear it said that the greatest joy in life is the birth of a child. It is something extraordinary and it changes everything,” he said. A child “makes us feel loved but can also teach us how to love.”

“God was born a child in order to encourage us to care for others,” said Francis, who has made attention to the poor and unjustly treated a key theme of his papacy.

Celebrations elsewhere in Europe were canceled or greatly scaled back as Covid-19 infections surge across the continent and a new variant that may be more contagious has been detected.

In Athens, Christmas Eve was eerily silent. In normal times, voices of children singing carols while tinkling metal triangles can be heard all day. The decades-old custom, in which children go house to house and receive small gifts, was banned this year. Groups of children managed to honor the tradition by singing to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis by video link.

Throughout the pandemic, one of the hardest-hit churches in New York City has been Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan. Church leaders say more than 60 members of the congregation — which numbered about 800 before the pandemic — have died of COVID-19, almost all of them part of the community of some 400 who attended services in Spanish.

Despite their own heartbreaks, congregation members — many of them immigrants — donated coats, scarves and other winter clothes for more than 100 migrant minors at a detention center in Manhattan.

While many other New York City churches have resumed in-person services, Saint Peter’s continues to offer its Masses only online. The schedule for Christmas Eve and Christmas day included Masses in English and Spanish, and a bilingual jazz vespers service.

In Bethlehem, officials tried to make the most out of a bad situation.

“Christmas is a holiday that renews hope in the souls,” said Mayor Anton Salman. “Despite all the obstacles and challenges due to corona and due to the lack of tourism, the city of Bethlehem is still looking forward to the future with optimism.”

Raw, rainy weather added to the gloomy atmosphere, as several dozen people gathered in the central Manger Square to greet Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa. Youth marching bands playing Christmas carols on bagpipes, accompanied by pounding drummers, led a joyous procession ahead of the patriarch’s arrival early in the afternoon.

“Despite the restrictions and limitations we want to celebrate as much as possible, with family, community and joy,” said Pizzaballa, who was to lead a small Midnight Mass gathering later in the evening. “We want to offer hope.”

Thousands of foreign pilgrims usually flock to Bethlehem for the celebrations. But the closure of Israel’s international airport to foreign tourists, along with Palestinian restrictions banning intercity travel in the areas they administer in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, kept visitors away.

The restrictions limited attendance to residents and a small entourage of religious officials. Evening celebrations, when pilgrims normally congregate around the Christmas tree, were canceled, and Midnight Mass was limited to clergy.

The coronavirus has dealt a heavy blow to Bethlehem’s tourism sector, the lifeblood of the local economy. Restaurants, hotels and gift shops have been shuttered.

It was not the usual raucous Christmas eve in Mexico City. The big celebration was a ceremony where the country’s first coronavirus vaccine shots were administered.

On Christmas Eve, parents usually take their kids to a downtown plaza where actors dress up as the Three Wise Men or Santa Claus and pose in front of elaborate backdrops resembling the sets of popular children’s movies.

But this year, the Wise Men and Santas were banned. Mexico’s other grand tradition, Midnight Mass, was canceled in many parishes.

Still, Zoé Robledo, director of Mexico’s social security system, said the start of the country’s COVID-19 vaccine program made it “an unforgettable Christmas.”

Rio de Janeiro’s iconic beaches remained open, but a City Hall decree aimed at limiting gatherings prevented drivers from parking along the shore. Rain also kept beachgoers at home.

Thomas Azevedo and his 9-year-old son braved the bad weather to set up a small stand, selling beer and caipirinhas made from fresh fruit. By early afternoon, he hadn’t sold a thing.

“It’s not so much the rain; in previous years it was full of tourists at Christmas. This year there’s no one,” said Azevedo, 28.

Australians had until recently been looking forward to a relatively Covid-19-free Christmas after travel restrictions across state borders relaxed in recent weeks in the absence of any evidence of community transmission. But after new cases were detected over the past week, states again closed their borders.

While many places around the globe were keeping or increasing restrictions for Christmas, Lebanon was an exception. With its economy in tatters and parts of its capital destroyed by a massive Aug. 4 port explosion, Lebanon has lifted most virus measures ahead of the holidays, hoping to encourage spending. Tens of thousands of Lebanese expatriates have arrived home for the holidays, leading to fears of an inevitable surge in cases during the festive season.

Lebanon has the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East — about a third of its 5 million people — and traditionally celebrates Christmas with much fanfare.

“People around us were tired, depressed and depleted, so we said let’s just plant a drop of joy and love,” said Sevine Ariss, one of the organizers of a Christmas fair along the seaside road where the explosion caused the most damage.

Source: AP