Conflict in the Middle East

In a year filled with the “turmoil of hatred and violence” — which Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa described as “terrible, horrible,” it has been very important to keep the “spiritual life of the Christian community,” as well as his own, “alive,” the patriarch said.

Even though death surrounds them every day, Gaza Strip’s Christian community tries to “relieve the suffering” by assisting each other with spiritual and material needs.

As the Israel-Hamas war expands into Lebanon, an agency of the Holy See has launched an emergency campaign to assist thousands of displaced families in that nation’s south.

Iraqi Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil said tensions between himself and Cardinal Louis Sako, the Baghdad-based Chaldean Catholic patriarch, were the result of a misunderstanding and denied accusations he was working against the patriarch.