An ancient Christian monastery possibly dating as far back as the years before Islam spread across the Arabian Peninsula has been discovered on an island off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, officials announced Thursday.
ROME — Iraqi Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako has reiterated his call for the creation of non-confessional states in the Middle East that give equal standing to all citizens, regardless of their religion.
Pope Francis will travel next month to Iraq, a land devastated by ongoing conflicts that have uprooted more than a million Christians in just two decades, France 24 reports.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem will open on Sunday for the first time in two months.
JERUSALEM — A small group of Franciscan monks and Roman Catholic faithful took to the streets of Jerusalem’s Christian Quarter in the Old City Sunday to distribute olive branches after the traditional Palm Sunday procession was cancelled due to restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.
America’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, Sam Brownback, said this week that hostility toward Christians in the world has reached an all-time high.
Coptic Christian homes in the southern province of Minya were attacked by Muslims protesting their use as places of worship, the region’s archdiocese said Saturday.
JERUSALEM — Jerusalem’s Franciscan friars have opened a new museum filled with artifacts related to daily life in Jesus’ time.
Tens of thousands of Christian pilgrims gathered at Christianity’s holiest site in Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday for the “Holy Fire” ceremony on the eve of Orthodox Easter.
TEL AVIV — Coptic Christians in Egypt celebrated Christmas on Sunday according to the Orthodox calendar with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi himself participating in prayers for the holiday in Cairo’s biggest cathedral.
Coptic Orthodox Christians packed Egypt’s newly built Nativity of Christ Cathedral on Saturday for a Christmas Eve mass after a bloody year for a minority repeatedly targeted by jihadists.
A gunman killed two Copts celebrating the New Year in an Egyptian alcohol shop early on Monday, judicial and security sources said, the latest deadly violence against the Christian minority.
Hymns filled a church in Iraq’s second city Mosul on Sunday as worshippers celebrated Christmas for the first time in four years after the end of jihadist rule.
Hundreds of Muslim demonstrators attacked an unlicensed church south of Cairo wounding three people, an Egyptian Coptic Christian diocese said on Saturday, in the latest assault on members of the country’s Christian minority.
In a warm holiday gesture during Israel’s winter season, the Jerusalem Municipality will continue its annual tradition of distributing free Christmas trees to the city’s Christian residents.
TEL AVIV — A photo posted by a Coptic Christian activist showing a special prayer session in memory of those killed in the mosque attack in Sinai on Friday aroused great appreciation from other Egyptian citizens who were quick to respond to that effect on social media.
Iran-backed Shia paramilitary forces operating in northern Iraq have been accused by a Kurdish parliamentarian of engaging in “flagrant injustice” toward Christians in the region which until earlier this year was in the grip of ISIS terrorists.
TEL AVIV — A Coptic clergyman was murdered north of Cairo Thursday by an anonymous assailant.
Amid growing concern regarding the Islamic State terror group’s increased targeting of Christians in Egypt, displaced Coptic Christians in the country’s northern Sinai claim the Egyptian government is neglecting their plight.
Pope Francis wrapped up a brief but deeply symbolic visit to Egypt on Saturday with an open-air Mass for the country’s tiny Catholic community, defying security concerns to show his support for the Christians of this Muslim majority Arab nation who have increasingly become targeted by Islamic militants.
TEL AVIV — Egyptian authorities have found the body of a Coptic Christian teenager who was murdered in the Bnei Swef district in southern Egypt.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said the persecution of Middle East Christians was “a stain on humanity,” during a meeting on Wednesday with leaders of Jerusalem’s Christian community.
Outside of Cairo’s St. Mark’s Cathedral, the seat of the Coptic Orthodox Pope, a dozen high-ranking police officers are stationed on all entrances, searching cars and scanning the area, as security measures are visibly beefed up outside churches before Easter prayers on Sunday.
TEL AVIV — Writing in an encrypted message service, Islamic State militants and supporters have celebrated the news of deadly twin suicide bombings at two Coptic churches in Egypt on Palm Sunday.
The twin bombings of churches in Egypt suggest that Islamic State group jihadists are lashing out as they find themselves coming under increasing pressure in Iraq and Syria, analysts say.
CAIRO, Egypt — President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared a three-month state of emergency in Egypt following twin church bombings that killed dozens of people in two cities on Sunday.
In a strange juxtaposition of news stories, hundreds of Egyptian Copts have fled the Sinai Peninsula after a series of recent Islamist attacks, just as the highest Sunni imam in Cairo is asserting Islam’s openness to a religiously pluralistic state.
Christian dignitaries in the Egyptian city of Ismailia have been absorbing a wave of refugees from across the Sinai Peninsula after at least seven Coptic Christians were murdered by militants affiliated with the Islamic State.
Preparations for Christmas are in full swing at the site of Jesus’s birthplace, with Bethlehem shops, hotels and church officials bracing for more visitors than 2015, when violence put a damper on celebrations.
As the coalition battling the Islamic State (IS) group pushes towards Mosul, Christian towns and villages in the surrounding region are being liberated. But the future is still unclear for those returning to Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian town.
Retired Navy SEAL and former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince thought it was “shocking indeed that Matt Lauer asked any question that wasn’t pre-scripted from the Clinton team” during Wednesday night’s national security forum.
Major churches across Egypt oppose a government bill regarding the building of churches in the country, according to Halim Boulous, a spokesman for the Egyptian Orthodox church.
