As of January 27, 360 clergymen, monks, and nuns of the Russian Orthodox Church are undergoing treatment for corona virus in Russia, Patriarch Kirill’s working group said on Wednesday. The overall number of clerics, monks, and nuns sick with corona virus halved on Wednesday as compared to the previous day, the Russian Orthodox Church said.
In total, 3,915 clergymen, monks, and nuns have come down with corona virus. The number of recoveries increased by 11 on Wednesday as compared to the previous day.
As of today, Russia has recorded 144 fatalities caused by complications of corona virus among clergymen, monks, and nuns. Of the 144 deceased, 14 are clergy from Moscow parishes.

A new survey from Lifeway Research found that less than half of Americans believe the nation’s churches are too segregated, yet most believe religious leaders play a “positive role” in improving race relations.
The survey of 1,200 Americans released found that 42% of U.S. adults believe “churches in America are too segregated,” while 36% disagree and 22% aren’t sure.
Americans are evenly split on the question of whether the nation has “come so far on racial relations,” with 46% agreeing and 46% disagreeing. However, white Americans are the most likely to say we’ve made significant progress (51%), while African Americans are the most likely to disagree (66%).
Overall, 38% of white Americans and 52% of black Americans believe churches are too segregated. When thinking about how to improve race relations, most Americans (57%) say religious leaders play a positive role.
In 2014, 74% of Americans agreed the nation has “come so far on racial relations.” The newest survey found a 28-point decline on that question.
Most Americans (58%) say race relations grew “more strained” after former President Donald Trump was elected in 2016. Eighteen percent say race relations stayed the same, while 11 percent say they improved.
Nearly seven in 10 Americans (69%) say racial diversity is good for the country, while just one-quarter (23%) say it is not.

On Jan. 14, at least 46 people belonging to the Pygmy ethnic group were killed in Ituri province by suspected militants of the extremist group, which is known for attacking, kidnapping, and killing Christians, as well as training and sending jihadists to other countries in Africa.
The roughly half a million Pygmy people face extensive persecution and discrimination in the country, Open Doors noted.
On Jan. 4, about 22 civilians were estimated to be killed with guns and machetes in an over-night attack on Mwenda village in the Beni region of neighboring North Kivu province.
Militants from the Allied Democratic Forces, which is based in neighboring Uganda, killed 25 more people in Tingwe village in the same region the same day.
At least 17 nearby villagers had been murdered with machetes a week earlier in Mwenda village.
The majority of those killed in the three attacks in the Beni region were Christians.
Islamic extremist groups have “a clear Islamic expansionist agenda,” Illia Djadi, an Open Doors spokesperson on freedom of religion or belief in sub-Saha-ran Africa, said. “It is a reminder of what is happening in other parts of the central Sahel region – groups like Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria, for example. The ideology, the agenda of establishing a ‘caliphate’ in the region, and the way they operate is the same, and we can see how they afflict terrible suffering on innocent people.”

“Live Lent as a path of conversion, prayer and sharing of our goods.” This is the invitation that Pope Francis makes in his message for Lent this year, which has as its theme “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem …” (Mt 20:18),
The Lenten journey, Francis recalls, is a time of conversion in which “renew our faith, draw from the “living water” of hope, and receive with open hearts the love of God, who makes us brothers and sisters in Christ”. “Fasting, prayer and almsgiving, as preached by Jesus (cf. Mt 6:1-18), enable and express our conversion. The path of poverty and self-denial (fasting), concern and loving care for the poor (almsgiving), and childlike dialogue with the Father (prayer) make it possible for us to live lives of sincere faith, living hope and effective charity.”
The renewed faith “calls us to accept the truth and testify to it before God and all our brothers and sisters. In this Lenten season, accepting and living the truth revealed in Christ means, first of all, opening our hearts to God’s word, which the Church passes on from generation to generation.” A truth that “is not an abstract concept reserved for a chosen intelligent few. Instead, it is a message that all of us can receive and understand thanks to the wisdom of a heart open to the grandeur of God, who loves us even before we are aware of it. Christ himself is this truth. By taking on our humanity, even to its very limits, he has made himself the way – demanding, yet open to all – that leads to the fullness of life.”
Fasting, then, “experienced as a form of self-denial, helps those who undertake it in simplicity of heart to rediscover God’s gift and to recognize that, created in his image and likeness, we find our fulfilment in him” and fasting “involves being freed from all that weighs us down – like consumerism or an excess of information, whether true or false – in order to open the doors of our hearts to the One who comes to us, poor in all things, yet “full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14): the Son of God our Saviour.”

The more children you have, the less you can give each one, and the worse they do. Right? Parents in pandemic isolation without the usual supports from schools, churches, and extended family will certainly resonate with the idea that their time, energy, and attention are split into ever-smaller slices with each child.
It’s also the tradeoff anthropologists and economists have assumed when studying modern fertility patterns. But when John Shaver came across projections during his graduate studies that Hispanic Catholics and Muslims were on track to surpass white Christian subgroups and Jews, respectively, by the midcentury, he was perplexed.
“It struck me as a puzzle,” said Shaver, who now teaches anthropology and religion at the University of Otago in New Zealand. “These groups may be growing rapidly, but if there’s not something there to mitigate the negative effects of large family size, these could be populations where the children in these groups are not functioning as well.”
But when Shaver investigated himself, he found that when families had support from religious communities, like churches, this negative scenario didn’t always play out.
Shaver and his colleagues recently published a paper exploring the effects of religious support on fertility and child development. They used ten years of data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, which recruited over 14,000 pregnant women in England in the early 1990s to track ever since—on measures such as children’s lead exposure to number of illnesses to developmental ups and downs. From this data they tested how church attendance and social support affected family size and child development.