1. Shock, despair and mourning in Aleppo amid ‘terror’ of the earthquake, local bishops say
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Despite evidence of rampant human-rights violations — including massacres, murders, and kidnappings — against Christians and religious minorities in Nigeria, the U.S. State Department under the Biden administration removed Nigeria from its CPC list in 2021 and kept the country off the list again in 2022.
Laws on apostasy are quite popular in some Muslim countries. According to a 2013 Pew survey, about 75% of respondents in Muslim-majority countries in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia favor making sharia, or Islamic law, the official law of the land.
6. United Nations: Men And Boys To Play Active Role To End FGM
In 2023 alone, there are 4.32 million girls around the world who are at risk of undergoing FGM.
8. 5 priests sentenced to 10 years for conspiracy in Nicaragua:
A Nicaraguan court has sentenced four Roman Catholic priests to 10 years in prison on conspiracy charges stemming from long-standing government allegations that the church backed illegal pro-democracy protests.
A human rights group in the Central American country quickly denounced the sentences handed down Monday and made known by lawyers of the Legal Defense Unit.
It was the latest chapter in a crackdown on the church by President Daniel Ortega.
9. Another Humanitarian Crisis Is Brewing in Europe:
A blockade cutting off a disputed region between Armenia and Azerbaijan may restart a simmering conflict.
“The purpose is ethnic cleansing,” Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California, said this week. He and the newly formed Save Karabakh Coalition are calling on the U.S. government to do more to pressure the Azerbaijan government to lift the blockade of the long-fought-over enclave.
10. Let My People Come and Go, Karabakh Christians Tell Azerbaijan:
“I came to Yerevan for eye surgery,” stated 13-year-old Maral Apelian, who lives in Artsakh, last month. “All I want is to go back to my family at home.
“Let my people go,” she shouted, recalling Moses. “Let my people go!”
11. Christian group urges Biden to prevent ‘genocide’ developing on Russia’s doorstep:
“Though thinly disguised as work of eco-activists protesting mining operations, the blockade’s intent was laid bare by President Aliyev’s offer that the road out was open to any Armenians who wished to leave,” the letter stressed. “Ethnic cleansing . . . not eco-activism.”
12. Cardinal Zen and Jimmy Lai among Hong Kongers nominated for Nobel Peace Prize:
“The nominees are representative of millions of Hong Kongers who peacefully opposed the steady erosion of the city’s democratic freedoms by the Hong Kong government and the government of the People’s Republic of China.”
13. Charges dropped, for now, against woman arrested for praying silently outside UK abortion clinic:
“It can’t be right that I was arrested and made a criminal, only for praying in my head on a public street,” Vaughan-Spruce said in a Feb. 3 statement.
“This is one of those situations in a law officer’s career that sticks with them forever,” said Brian Bruchey, public information officer and former patrol deputy serving since 2007. “I have a son, and this kind of call touches home. It’s tough to see defenseless victims like a baby.”
15. ‘We want women to thrive’ — A look inside a Chicago maternity home:
“If it wasn’t for Aid for Women, and everything that they do, I wouldn’t be here,” Gina told The Pillar. “I don’t know if there’s any other program or assistance that would’ve done what they did for me. I mean they just did everything, everything they could possibly do to help me.
When I appeared before the justices in December 2021 with a petition to support Mississippi’s laws regulating abortion, I argued that we can and must both empower women and promote life. With the five simple words, “Roe and Casey are overruled,” the Court granted the people this opportunity.
With the task now falling to us, we must rise to this challenge with the very same energy we mustered for five decades to bring us to this new era. Roe has been overturned, and now the hard work just gets harder.
The pro-life movement has always been about compassion and support for woman and child, establishing a network of pregnancy resource centers ready and willing to open their doors and lend whatever hand a mother needs. We will continue to support these centers and to grow the safety net that helps women through pregnancy and into motherhood, but we cannot stop there.
17. Why more women, like me, are abandoning the pill over emerging health concerns:
“We are moving, culturally, toward a place where we’re recognizing that putting a bunch of chemicals in our body isn’t necessarily a great idea,”
18. Nicole Winfield: Pope accuses critics of exploiting Pope Benedict XVI’s death:
The commentary had the effect of pitting the recently departed former pope, who remained a point of reference for conservatives and traditionalists, against the current pope.
19. Republicans blast Smithsonian for kicking out Catholic students over ‘pro-life’ beanies:
“This wouldn’t happen to students wearing ‘Defund the Police’ or ‘Free Palestine’ shirts,” tweeted Ms. Haley. “Bias against conservatives runs deep in our culture & gov.”
20. FACE-ing the Facts:
The evil in play here is the ongoing attempt by the DOJ to improperly weaponize the FACE Act to stifle peaceful pro-life protesters. This weaponization has deliberately intensified in recent months, in keeping with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s public commitment last July to mobilize the federal legal apparatus in support of abortion rights after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
21. Grazie Pozo Christie: The calamity of death and the necessity of mourning:
The experience we fear the most is that of death, with its awful finality and hideous separation. And yet death is embedded in life, here to stay. With all our scientific progress we have not been able to extend our lifespan at all, let alone begin to see a way to achieve the pipedreams of billionaires who have poured their capital into “solving” death.
What we have been able to do is to mute death — compartmentalize it, box it in, marginalize it, remove it from our sight — as we’ve done with many of our cemeteries and funeral homes. Our old people die in hospices, with trained assistants to sedate them on their way, and are rushed to the crematorium when their souls have barely fled. Ashes are scattered in bodies of water, while wakes and funeral rites have been replaced by “celebrations of life.” We are encouraged to celebrate immediately, because grief hurts and what hurts has no business interrupting the cheerful tempo of our modern lives.
My dear father died a month ago. He was 86 and had been diagnosed with the terrible, terminal illness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) more than two years ago. And yet, I was completely unprepared for his going away from us.
22. Spiritual advisers offering final comfort in execution rooms:
In November, convicted killer Kevin Johnson spent his final moments speaking softly with a pastor, praying, being assured of forgiveness. When Amber McLaughlin was executed in the same room weeks later, her pastor stroked her hand, providing comfort even as McLaughlin expressed that something was causing her pain.
A Supreme Court ruling last March requires states to allow spiritual advisers to join condemned inmates in their final moments, where they can speak together and even touch. Nationwide, spiritual advisers have been alongside 15 of the 19 people who have been executed since the ruling.
“At the end of their lives, they were able to find a peace that they couldn’t find elsewhere in their lives, and that was important,” said the Rev. Darryl Gray, who was with Johnson.
It takes a toll on the spiritual advisers, though.
“Watching someone be killed when they were fully alive — I just can’t get that out of my bones,” said the Rev. Lauren Bennett, McLaughlin’s spiritual adviser.
23. Jewish communities embrace security staff in face of rising antisemitism:
Schools, Jewish community centers and synagogues have come to rely on their security staff. While security at synagogues used to be an afterthought, said Jason Moss, the executive director of the Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel Valley and Pomona, now, “it’s part of all planning and into every aspect of a synagogue.”
After a gunman took hostages at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas in January 2022, Moss spent time looking at security staff in the Jewish world. “They play a vital role in keeping the community secure,” he said. “That it’s something to be commended for, especially for helping to defend a place that is not a part of who they are in some cases.”
Melissa Levy says she couldn’t do her job as director of congressional engagement at Pasadena Jewish Temple without the security staff.
“They’re a part of the family,” said Levy. “Because they are keeping their eyes and ears open and making sure that we stay safe, we can do the rest of our jobs and really help build community here.”
24. Ukraine Catholic Church moves from Russian-affiliated Julian calendar:
For a large part of Ukrainian society, the Julian calendar is perceived as a marker of the “Russkiy mir,” or “Russian world,” ideology, which has been used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify his invasion in Ukraine.
In polling conducted by Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture last year, 60% of Ukrainians said the country’s churches should move away from the Russian-influenced liturgical schedule.
25. Plough: The Noble Virtue of Charity:
Charity has no shame, nor fear, nor anxiety. She is so upright she cannot bow on account of anything that might happen to her.
26. Apply Today for the Witherspoon Institute’s Summer 2023 Seminars:
Witherspoon’s Summer Seminars are a series of intense courses that examine different areas of human knowledge using the insights of the western intellectual tradition, including the theory of natural law, while welcoming opposing viewpoints and questions in a spirit of friendly collegiality. We are looking not only to guide intellects, but also to help young men and women become responsible, well-ordered, and intellectually courageous.
27. Why I’m raising my daughter without an American Girl doll:
So perhaps you’ll understand why, when walking through a high-end shopping center in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, recently, the little girl inside of me felt drawn like a magnet to the American Girl store. “I’ve never been in one!” I gasped to my husband, who I’m pretty sure would have preferred alien abduction to actually having to enter the establishment. But he humored his starry-eyed wife, and we walked through big glass doors into one of the 10 brick-and-mortar American Girl stores in the country.
That’s pretty much when the stars fell from my eyes.
28. Nursing students put training to the test on return flight from Disney World:
Sipes was watching an in-flight movie when he became aware the flight crew were asking for help assisting a woman who was experiencing a medical problem.
“We took out our headphones, looked at each other, and asked, ‘You ready?’ and then headed down in that direction,” said Sipes, recalling how he and Zottnick moved to help the woman, along with several others on the flight who also had medical training, including a respiratory therapist.
29. Statue of Mary untouched in earthquake that demolished cathedral in Turkey
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