If you thought that the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, Ireland, this June was just for Catholics, you would be wrong. “There is a genuine sense of excitement and expectation right across the Christian traditions in Ireland”, says Rev. Michael Jackson, the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin….

It may be the 50th global gathering of the Catholic Church on the Eucharist, but from the outset the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Diarmuid Martin, decided this Congress should also become an opportunity to further the ecumenical journey in Ireland, which for historical reasons has often been an uphill climb. On the opening day of the Congress, Monday June 11th, pilgrims will explore the theme, Communion in One Baptism with key-note addresses from Br. Alois Löser (Prior of the Taizé Community, France), Dr Maria Voce (President of Focolare) and Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev (Metropolitan Archbishop of Volokolamsk -Russian Orthodox).

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[Richard] Holloway’s powerful account [in His book Leaving Alexandria] mirrors the progressive loss of belief which we see across Britain and Europe today, and it comes hard on the heels of Alain de Botton’s latest book Religion for Atheists, which advertises itself with the question “Even if religion isn’t true, can’t we enjoy the best bits?” It assumes that the supernatural claims of religion are false, but suggests that we hang on to the communal ritual and cultural elements. Holloway makes a similar plea when he says “I don’t any longer believe in religion but I want it around, less sure of itself and purged of everything except the miracle of pity”.

These books leave me with the question: Does this work? Can you have the gilt without the gingerbread? Isn’t there something fundamentally dishonest about those wistful atheists who have taken leave of God and who yet continue to use theological concepts and cling on to religious practices?

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Soldiers in the northern Nigerian city of Kano killed four suspected members of Boko Haram Islamist sect in a raid on their hideout on Sunday, an army spokesman said.

“We carried out an operation today on a terrorists hideout”¦where we killed four of them and arrested many after a prolonged shootout,” Lieutenant Iweha Ikedichi told AFP. Troops from military special Joint Task Force (JTF) had stormed the hideout in the Hotoro Kwari suburb of the city notorious for Boko Haram attacks.

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The leader of Nigeria’s bishops is criticizing the government’s response to the growing threat from radical Islamist groups, saying Christians are increasingly at risk of attack.

Archbishops Ignatius Kaigama, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria, along with Archbishop John Onaiyekan of Abuja spoke with Aid to the Church in Need about the plight of Christians in the country, and how the government is handling the situation.

The statement came after at least 21 people were killed and more than 20 others were injured last Sunday in coordinated attacks targeting worship services at a university campus in Kano, and a chapel in Maiduguri belonging to the Church of Christ in Nigeria.

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Jeronimo de Castro Abreu Magalhaes was born in Mage, and Zelia Pedreira Abreu Magalhaes in Niteroi. They were married on July 27, 1876, in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

He was a civil engineer and she was a lawyer, with a fine artistic, literary and scientific formation, so that at 14 she translated the work of Cesare Cantu Il Giovinetto from Italian to Portuguese.

From the moment they met, Jeronimo and Zelia always wanted to please God, when in their exchange of looks it was already clear that their falling in love would be different, said Father Roberto Lopes, who is in charge of the processes of canonization of the Archdiocese of Rio de Janeiro.

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When a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed car into the flagship church of one of Nigeria’s largest denominations, angry Christian youth retaliated by burning Muslim shops and killing nearby motorcycle riders.

The February incident, which killed 12 and injured 40 at the Church of Christ in Nigeria’s Jos headquarters, fueled the global debate over whether Nigeria will erupt into a religious civil war. Christmas Day bombings of northern churches by Islamist extremists, which killed 44, also fueled such fears. The headlines haven’t stopped since. On Sunday, gunmen attacked church services in Kano and in Maiduguri, killing at least 21 people, including a pastor preparing for Communion.

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Pioneers, an evangelical mission movement, is reporting that thousands of Christians from Ghana, Nigeria and the Philippines are asking to be trained in the principles of “church-planting movements” (CPMs).

Today, cross-cultural church planting is taking place in regions fraught with poverty and persecution. By necessity, the local church often takes root in its simplest form. In these places, churches are essentially groups of believers gathering in homes, under trees, or cafe back rooms to worship, pray, study the Bible and teach others to do the same. And it is in response to these realities that Pioneers has adopted the “church-planting movements” approach.

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A gunman detonated a grenade in a Nairobi church on Sunday, killing one worshipper and wounding 16 in the latest in a series of attacks in Kenya since it sent troops into Somalia to crush Islamist militants blamed for cross-border raids.

Nairobi has said al Shabaab militants, who merged with al Qaeda earlier this year, are behind the surge in violence and kidnappings that has threatened tourism in east Africa’s biggest economy and wider regional destabilization.

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Q: Your Excellency, the Christians in Pakistan are a minority, less than 3% of the total population. How would you see your relationship with your Muslim compatriots?

Bishop Shah: In day-to-day life, Christians and a Muslims work together. It is not a problem. We certainly feel that we are a minority but at the same time, we feel that we too are Pakistanis. We are all Pakistanis. The problem occurs when a religious group creates some problems; for instance, in certain remote areas where an Imam preaches a biased teaching. But otherwise, even when I was in school where the majority of the students were Muslims, we were good friends. We would exchange information about Jesus, the Bible, The Prophet and the Koran. There was never a problem. It is only very recently that we feel a problem surfacing in our inter-relationships with the Muslims and we have to be very careful. People working in offices never discuss religion, which is a very new development and that is perhaps a good thing.

Q: ”¦that religion should not take part of the day to day?

Bishop Shah: ”¦ they [Muslim] and we [Christians] know that we are still friends. The problem is those groups that create problems and in certain villages, this is more apparent.

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The Primate of the Church of Nigeria has denounced as “satanic” the calls for the impeachment of the President of Nigeria after an Italian construction firm refurbished a church in the president’s home town.

Speaking to reporters last week, Archbishop Nicholas Okoh said the claim put forward by the opposition ACN party that there was an element of corruption in the refurbishment of a church was nonsense.

“The call for the impeachment of the president over the renovation of the church in his town is satanic and it is capable of causing religious bigotry which we don’t want. The ACN should apologise and retract the statement. We call on the National Assembly to disregard the call,” the archbishop said.

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One person was killed and nine others were injured last night after suspected Islamic extremists attacked a TV viewing center in a Christian area of Jos where a crowd had gathered to watch soccer.

At about 10:15 p.m. at the viewing center, one of many such establishments popular in Nigeria for watching soccer matches, the attackers drove past the site and threw an explosive device at hundreds of Christians watching the match, eyewitnesses told Compass.

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The Anglican archbishop who was instrumental in delivering peace to Sudan has raised the spectre of full-blown war and appealed for restraint from the presidents of Sudan and South Sudan.

Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul Yak, leader of the Episcopal Church of Sudan, urged the two presidents to pursue peace in spite of the difficulties following the major clashes threatening the fragile peace that churches helped to broker in 2005.

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Britain’s drift away from its Christian moorings is impacting its ability to support Christians being attacked in other countries, the Archbishop of Nigeria has warned.

Archbishop Nicholas Okoh made the comments during a meeting at the House of Lords on Tuesday night where he gave a report on widespread attacks against churches in Nigeria.

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Prelate of the Methodist Church, Dr. Sunday Ola Makinde, has described as ”˜careless and unguarded statement’ the comment made by American government that years of neglect and poverty led to the insurgence of Boko Haram sect in Nigeria.

Speaking at the weekend during the launch of a book titled “Women as Teachers and Character Moulders” written by Mrs. Ezinne Elizabeth Abimbola Makinde at Hoare’s Memorial Methodist Cathedral, Yaba, Lagos, the prelate declared the premises on which such a statement was based as poor research that lacks every credibility.

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Sudan and newly-independent South Sudan accused each other of launching fresh attacks on their territories on Sunday as neither side showed any sign of bowing to global pressure to return to the negotiating table.

South Sudan said Sudanese troops attacked settlements about 10km (6 miles) on its side of the border and carried out air raids in a range of areas including its oil-producing Unity state.

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As war looms between Sudan and South Sudan, Christians of southern origin living in Sudan fear retribution from its Islamic government.

As of April 8, at least half a million ethnic southerners (the majority of whom are Christian) living in Sudan are now considered foreigners if they have not registered for citizenship. Officials in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, gave southerners another 30 days to register or leave the country.

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A new revelation of young American soldiers caught on camera while defiling insurgents’ remains in Afghanistan has intensified questions within the military community about whether fundamental discipline is breaking down given the nature and length of the war.
The photographs, published by The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, show more than a dozen soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division’s Fourth Brigade Combat Team, along with some Afghan security forces, posing with the severed hands and legs of Taliban attackers in Zabul Province in 2010. They seemed likely to further bruise an American-Afghan relationship that has been battered by crisis after crisis over the past year, even as the two governments are in the midst of negotiations over a long-term strategic agreement.

The images also add to a troubling list of cases ”” including Marines videotaped urinating on Taliban bodies, the burning of Korans, and the massacre of villagers attributed to a lone Army sergeant ”” that have cast American soldiers in the harshest possible light before the Afghan public.

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The Nigerian religious sect Boko Haram had been sporadically attacking police stations and people for years with machetes and sometimes guns to create an Islamic state in its corner of Africa’s largest nation.

Then, in 2010, the group exploded into violence with suicide bombings, car bombs and coordinated assaults, months after an al-Qaeda leader in Algeria disclosed that the terror group had decided to help the Nigerian radicals….

“This new Jihadist nexus in Africa” is a rising danger that the West has yet to fully comprehend,” said Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Sudan’s Khartoum government says the country is officially in a state of war with South Sudan.

The top United Nations human rights official confirmed that statement by condemning Sudan’s indiscriminate bombing raids that resulted in civilian casualties in South Sudan.

Khartoum began the week with a wave of air raids on Southern border areas, killing several civilians and hitting a UN peacekeeper base. South Sudan struck back with a vow to hold their positions in a contested oil field seized from Khartoum’s army.

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The Archbishop of Wales has lent his support to gay marriage today, saying: “All life-long committed relationships deserved the welcome, pastoral care and support of the Church.”

In his presidential address to members of the Church in Wales’ Governing Body in Llandudno, Dr Barry Morgan said Christians “need to show how the Gospel of Jesus is good news for gay people”.

He said the church had to ask itself whether it would “protect and support pastorally, faithful, stable, lifelong relationships of whatever kind in order to encourage human values such as love and fidelity and recognise the need in Christian people for some public religious support for these”.

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The recommendations come in the report from the UK Parliament’s International Development Select Committee who held an inquiry into prospects for peace and development in the world’s newest country. The Anglican Alliance brought together the Episcopal Church of Sudan, the Diocese of Salisbury and Lambeth Palace to provide evidence to the inquiry.

Rebecca Coleman, representing the Episcopal Church of Sudan, and Canon Ian Woodward of the Diocese of Salisbury, gave oral evidence to the Select Committee, focusing especially on the church’s education services in South Sudan, and the role played by the Church, in particular by Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul Yak, in peace-building.

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The cold war between Africa’s newest neighbours is heating up. South Sudanese troops advanced deep into Sudan on April 10th, capturing its most valuable oilfield, Heglig, in the biggest clash since the south seceded from the north last July. Southern troops claimed to be responding to air and ground attacks from their former master, but the scale of the offensive is unprecedented. A fragile peace process that has survived several bumps in the past few months may now falter. Sudan has suspended its participation in the divorce negotiations in neighbouring Ethiopia. Parliaments in both countries are calling for military mobilisation. The drums of war beat ever louder.

The last straw could be South Sudan claiming Heglig as its own. A ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2009 appears to put the field in the Sudanese state of Southern Kordofan. But the south now disputes this. “Heglig is deep inside our borders,” says Colonel Philip Aguer, a spokesman for South Sudan’s army, adding that its troops have moved farther north. Sudan will not accept this, and for once it seems to be getting some international support. The African Union is calling on the south to withdraw its soldiers immediately and unconditionally. Sudan has complained to the UN Security Council.

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Crimes against humanity in Sudan and South Sudan must be stopped ”” or the British Government will be guilty of allowing the horrors of Rwandan-style genocide to be repeated, Baroness Cox has warned.

In the wake of reports of ethnic cleansing in the Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile regions of Sudan, Lady Cox told the House of Lords on Mon­day of last week that the Gov­ern­ment must take a more robust approach.

“After Rwanda, the British Gov­ernment famously said that they will never condone another genocide, but this is precisely what they are now perceived to be doing.” The “powerful intervention” by Britain into Libya raised questions about whether its foreign policy was influ­enced by racism, she said.

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At 11:40pm on Saturday night, the exact time the Titanic struck the iceberg that led to its sinking less than three hours later, Rev Chris [Bennett] will lead a vigil that will feature a virtual choir, a reading of Titanic’s SOS messages and a reading aloud of the names of those who were lost.

“Lips may wobble,” he admitted.

“This city will truly, properly pay a profound and heartfelt tribute to that tragic moment which shook so many lives, echoed around the world and [which] still resounds down through the decades.”

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Boko Haram formed in 2002 as a local Salafist activist group, but evidence suggests that it now collaborates and shares intelligence with al Qaeda affiliates in the region, including al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al Shabaab in Somalia. The groups have been able to carry out increasingly sophisticated attacks on schools, churches, police stations and military bases.

They may also be working to expand their reach. The Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank, published a report this month showing that al Qaeda is using its African partnerships to regroup and extend its propaganda and recruiting efforts, including in Britain. U.S. Congressmen Peter King and Patrick Meehan wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month urging the State Department to designate Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization for legal and intelligence-gathering purposes.

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South Korea’s foreign minister says a North Korean long-range rocket launch has been confirmed a “failure.”

Kim Sung-hwan provided no further details about what he said was the North’s failure to launch a rocket the West has condemned as a cover for a missile test.

He told reporters Friday in a nationally televised address that Seoul is “strongly condemning North Korea’s new leadership” for ignoring international warnings to cancel the launch.

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The mother of a 6-month-old girl has been wrongly jailed for more than a month, as Pakistani authorities have failed to file a charge sheet within the mandatory 14-day period against the young Christian woman falsely accused of “blaspheming” the prophet of Islam, her attorney said.

Shamim Bibi, 26, of village Chak No. 170/7R Colony, in the Fort Abbas area of Bahawalpur district, was charged under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s “blasphemy” statutes after neighbors accused her of uttering remarks against Muhammad. She was arrested on Feb. 28.

Speaking ill of Muhammad in Pakistan is punishable by life imprisonment or death under Pakistan’s internationally condemned blasphemy laws.

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The leader of a radical Islamist sect in Nigeria has challenged the nation’s president, saying he could never destroy the group blamed for hundreds of killings this year alone, according to an online video posted Thursday.

The video featuring Imam Abubakar Shekau came as authorities blamed gunmen from the sect known as Boko Haram for killing two civilians in northeast Nigeria.

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A second day of fighting between Sudan and South Sudan in their disputed border regions has prompted international concern that the conflict might develop into outright war.

The African Union says it is deeply alarmed by the clashes over oilfields, and called on both sides to exercise the utmost restraint.

Sudan has pulled out of negotiations with South Sudan.

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