Biden pledge to codify Roe v Wade 'disturbing' and 'tragic,' bishops say
- Jan 23, 2021
As Lebanon’s top political leaders struggle to form a government coalition, Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Beshara Raï continues to call on President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri to hold a “personal reconciliation meeting.”
A Lebanese Capuchin then serving in Baabdat — Father Salim Rizkallah — had been appointed vice postulator of the sainthood cause of Armenian Catholic Archbishop Ignatius Maloyan of Mardin, Turkey.
Amid suffering and despair, further darkened by the coronavirus pandemic, Catholic patriarchs of the Middle East urged their faithful at Christmastime to hold on to hope.
Popes often use the holidays to dispatch messages to various countries and to address specific crises, sometimes through their Urbi et Orbi blessings and sometimes through special appeals.
Pope Francis has sent Christmas messages to Lebanon and South Sudan in which he offered comfort to citizens and urged the leaders of each to exert more effort in the quest for peace.
More than 100,000 Christians driven out from Iraq’s Ninevah Plain by the Islamic State in the summer of 2014 are living as refugees in Lebanon.