Orthodox patriarch taken to hospital during visit to US

The spiritual leader of the world’s 200 million Eastern Orthodox Christians was admitted to hospital on Sunday in Washington on the first full day of a planned 12-day US visit and will stay overnight, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America said.

The archdiocese said Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was preparing to leave for a service at the Cathedral of Saint Sophia in the nation’s capital when he felt unwell “due to the long flight and full schedule of events upon arrival”.

“His doctor advised him to rest and out an abundance of caution” go to George Washington University Hospital “for observation”, according to the archdiocese.

Later Sunday, it said the patriarch “is feeling well” and was expected to be released on Monday.

Bartholomew, 81, has a broad agenda spanning religious, political and environmental issues.

His schedule includes a meeting on Monday with President Joe Biden and various ceremonial and interfaith gatherings.

© Efrem Lukatsky Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I (Efrem Lukatsky/AP)

The patriarch is considered first among equals in the Eastern Orthodox hierarchy, which gives him prominence but not the power of a Catholic pope.

Making the latest of several trips to the country during his 30 years in office, Bartholomew is expected to address concerns ranging from a pending restructuring of the American church to his church’s status in his homeland, Turkey.

Bartholomew is scheduled to receive an honorary degree from the University of Notre Dame on Thursday in an event highlighting efforts to improve Orthodox-Catholic ties, centuries after the two churches broke decisively in 1054 amid disputes over theology and papal claims of supremacy.

Just as his influence is limited in Turkey, it is also limited in the Eastern Orthodox communion, rooted in Eastern Europe and the Middle East with a worldwide diaspora.

Large portions of the communion are in national churches that are independently governed, with the ecumenical patriarch having only symbolic prominence, though he does directly oversee Greek Orthodox and some other jurisdictions.

The Russian Orthodox Church, with about 100 million adherents, has in particular asserted its independence and influence and rejected Bartholomew’s 2019 recognition of the independence of Orthodox churches in Ukraine, where Moscow’s patriarch still claims sovereignty.

In addition to his scheduled meetings with top US officials, Bartholomew also plans to hold a ceremonial door-opening at St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine in New York City, which was built to replace a parish church destroyed during the 9/11 attacks, and to commemorate those killed at the nearby World Trade Centre.

A 2017 Pew Research Centre report found that there were about 200 million Eastern Orthodox worldwide.

It reported about 1.8 million Orthodox in the United States, with nearly half of those Greek Orthodox. 

Reference: By Associated Press Reporter

US vows to help free missionaries in Haiti as kidnappers demand $17m ransom

The United States on Tuesday vowed to do all in its power to free US and Canadian missionaries taken hostage in Haiti, after kidnappers demanded $1 million for each of the group of 17.

A gang known as 400 Mawozo has been identified as behind the kidnapping of the group, which includes five children, on Saturday.

“We have in the administration been relentlessly focused on this,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a news conference on a visit to Ecuador, saying an FBI team was involved.

“We will do everything we can to help resolve the situation.”

The kidnapping by one of Haiti’s brazen criminal gangs has underlined the country’s deepening woes following the assassination of president Jovenel Moise in July, with lawlessness mounting in the Western hemisphere’s poorest nation.

The missionaries work for US-based Christian Aid Ministries, which said that the group was abducted east of the capital Port-au-Prince while returning from visiting an orphanage between the city and the border with the Dominican Republic.

The area has been under the control of 400 Mawozo for months, with security sources telling AFP that the gang wants a total of $17 million paid in ransoms.

© Richard Pierrin, AFP

‘Unsustainable’ security crisis

Haitian Justice Minister Liszt Quitel confirmed that the gang was responsible for the kidnapping of 16 Americans and one Canadian.

He told The Washington Post that kidnap gangs usually demand huge sums of money which are reduced during negotiations, saying his officials did not take part in the talks.

The captive group is made up five men, seven women and five children whose ages have not been disclosed.

Blinken said that the State Department was in close contact with the Haitian government over the kidnappings.

“Unfortunately, this is also indicative of a much larger problem and that is a security situation that is, quite simply, unsustainable,” he said.

“That can’t go on. That’s certainly not conducive to an environment in which the work that needs to be done,” including “investments that need to be made in the people of Haiti, in their future, can be made.”

In April, 10 people including two French clerics were kidnapped and held for 20 days by 400 Mawozo in the same region.

The United States in August issued a red alert on Haiti, urging Americans not to travel to the Caribbean nation because of rampant kidnapping, crime and civil unrest.

On Monday a general strike was called to protest the rapidly disintegrating security nationwide.

In Port-au-Prince, shops, schools and government buildings were shuttered but schools were opened in several other towns around the country.

Cases of kidnappings have more than doubled in Haiti over the past year as gangs are growing increasingly numerous and powerful, leaving an already weak police force unable to cope.

(AFP) 

Reference: News Wires: NEWS WIRES

Pope Emeritus Benedict: I look forward to seeing old friend in the afterlife

Retired Pope Benedict XVI has said he hopes to soon join a beloved professor friend in “the afterlife”, in a sign that the 94-year-old pontiff is not only accepting his eventual death but welcoming it.

Benedict penned an October 2 letter to a German priest, thanking him for letting him know of the passing of the Reverend Gerhard Winkler, a Cistercian priest and academic colleague of the former Joseph Ratzinger.

© Andrew Medichini Retired Pope Benedict says he is looking forward to being reunited with an old friend in the afterlife ‘soon’ (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

“Of all my colleagues and friends he was the closest to me,” Benedict wrote, according to the letter reproduced in German media.

“Now he has reached the afterlife, where many friends certainly await him. I hope I can join them soon.”

Benedict became the first pope in 600 years to resign when he renounced the papacy in 2013, saying he did not have the strength of body and mind to guide the Catholic Church.

Throughout the papacy of Pope Francis, Benedict has lived in a converted monastery in the Vatican gardens, occasionally greeting visitors and writing, but by and large keeping to his vow to live “hidden to the world”. 

Several feared dead after blast at mosque in Afghanistan

Reference: Sky News: