The Shepherd, October 2007
NEWS SECTION
PONTIFF & PATRIARCH TO MEET IN NAPLES
ACCORDING to the “Zenit” news agency, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI will be in Naples on 21st October, for the opening of the 21st International Encounter of Peoples and Religions. The meeting, organized by the Community of Sant’ Egidio and the Archdiocese of Naples, has the theme, “Toward a World Without Violence: Religions and Cultures in Dialogue.” His All-Holiness Patriarch Bartholomeos I told the “Apcom” news agency: “I will be in Naples for four days and will take part in Benedict XVI’s celebration and the interreligious (!) prayer service.”
GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH HOSTS
JEWISH SERVICE
VIA “Post-Bulletin,” Matt Russell has posted news of a Greek Orthodox Church (Œc.Patr) hosting a Jewish service in Rochester MN. The B’nai Israel community demolished its building at 621 Second St. S.W. in late July, leaving the synagogue without a home for a year as it builds a new synagogue. They have since held services at the Ronald McDonald House, but the Holy Anargyroi Greek Orthodox Parish offered its church for use during the Jewish congregation’s busy High Holidays of Rosh Hoshanah and Yom Kippur. A member of the Jewish congregation commented: “To me, it shows a commonality of people of all faiths.” It is, of course, precisely to proclaim the uniqueness of Orthodoxy and that the Captain of our salvation is the Lord Jesus Christ (see Hebrews 2: 9-18), that the Orthodox Church prohibits such practices, which indeed must also have caused scandal and hurt to many of the Jewish faith.
MURDERED CLERGYMEN & MONASTICS
AN INTERFAX report, dated 25th August claims that since 1990, 24 Orthodox priests and two monks have been murdered in Russia. The most widely known of these and the first to suffer, in this post-Soviet period was the Archpriest Alexander Men. One, Archpriest Alexander Zharkov was murdered shortly after leaving the Moscow Patriarchate to place himself under the then separate Russian Church Abroad in 1997. The last listed is Hegoumen Avenir Smolin, the rector of the church of the Ascension of Our Lord in the town of Furmanov, who was killed during the night of 21st/22nd August this year. The Interfax report makes no comment on the reasons for these frightful crimes, which indeed might have been various.
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