So-called “Christian” militias contradict the Christian approach of love, tolerance and peace, said the Chaldean Catholic Church.

Individual Christians who wish to help defend and maintain security in Iraq can best do so by enlisting with the country’s official army or joining the federal police force, said a statement from the Chaldean patriarchate, headed by Cardinal Louis Sako, in Baghdad.

Individuals who live in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq could join its local Peshmerga forces, said the statement, signed by the cardinal.

“We respect individual decisions” to join Iraq’s state-sponsored coalition of some 40 different militias called the Popular Mobilization Forces “or to get involved in politics, but not to form a Christian ‘brigade,’” it said, “since forming a Christian armed militia contradicts the Christian spirituality that calls for love, tolerance, forgiveness and peace.”

The patriarchate sent the official announcement to the Vatican news agency, Fides, and the Rome-based missionary news agency, AsiaNews, which both published reports about the statement on July 25.

The statement expressed full support for a decree Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi issued on July 1. The decree gave on a July 31 deadline to all militias in the country to operate fully within the nation’s armed forces and be subject to its regulations. The armed groups already answer to the Prime Minister, who is commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces.

The militias assisted the Iraqi- and U.S.-led coalition in pushing out the Islamic State group. But the new decree mandates each militia group to choose to fully integrate with the military and no longer be a political organization or to remain a political entity and disarm themselves; groups will no longer be allowed to operate as both a political and paramilitary body.

The Chaldean patriarchate said it supported the decree, saying it was “an important step in the right direction.”

“This decree would limit the weapons to the state, strengthen its institutions and reinforce national awareness among Iraqis, in terms of their national identity,” it said. It should also help “solidify the pillars of a strong government of law, citizenship and equality,” it added.

Continuing a years-long trend, the Catholic Church in Germany saw a significant drop in membership this past year, losing more than 200,000 members in 2018.

According to the German Bishops’ Conference, the Catholic Church in the country declined by 216,078 members last year. Protestant Churches saw a similar drop, with 220,000 members leaving during that time period.

Fr Hans Langendörfer, SJ, secretary of the German Bishops’ Conference, said the numbers show a need for the Church in Germany to be “more self-critical and constructive.”

“The current statistics are worrying. There is nothing to gloss over about the numbers, they confirm a trend that has shaped the Church in recent years,” he said in a statement.

Adding that a loss of trust and credibility has caused great damage, the priest went on to say that Church leaders must examine the question of how to make the Catholic Church a welcoming environment, where people can find hope and feel at home.

One of Pope Francis’s top aides delivered a personal letter from the pontiff to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, among other things expressing Francis’s “deep concern” for the humanitarian situation in Idlib, a rebel-controlled area in northwestern Syria that’s been the target of Russian-backed airstrikes since April.

A Vatican statement on July 22 indicated that Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, who heads the Vatican’s department for Promoting Integral Human Development, met that morning in Damascus with Assad, accompanied by Italian Cardinal Mario Zenari, the Pope’s ambassador in Syria.

The statement, issued by new papal spokesman Matteo Bruni, said that the letter “expresses the deep concern of His Holiness Pope Francis for the humanitarian situation in Syria, with particular reference to the dramatic consequences facing the civilian population in Idlib.”

Airstrikes in Idlib alone left at least 17 civilians dead, including seven children, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The observatory warned that the death toll could rise significantly as bodies are cleared from rubble.

A pregnant woman and a child were among four people killed in attacks by suspected Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria’s Plateau State on mid July.

The attackers targeted the villages of Ancha and Tafigana in the Bassa Local Government area, as reported by news site Nasoweseeamonline.
Margaret Wakili, 27, from Ancha village and who was 6 months pregnant, was killed at the farm where she was visiting her husband. They both fled but the attackers caught his wife. As they killed her he heard them shout “‘Allahu Akbar, we have killed infidel, we need to kill more,” he said. He identified the 8 attackers as Fulani from Hayin Rukuba. An older woman in the village also was killed.

In Tafigana, 46-year-old Thomas Wollo, and his 7-year-old son Nggwe Thomas were beheaded when they returned home from choir practice on July 14 night.

Following the killings, the attackers went on to a nearby village where they destroyed crops to the value of millions of naira, according to Zongo Law-rence, Publicity Secretary of Miango Youth Development Association.

Pope Francis appointed Professor Stefan Walter Hell, Director of the Max Planck Institute of Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, and of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany, an ordinary member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is of international scope, multi-racial in its composition and non-sectarian in the election of its Members. The Academy’s work includes six areas: Basic Sciences, Sciences, and Technology of Global Problems, Science of the Problems of the Developing World, Scientific Policy, Bio-ethics, and Epistemology.

Professor Hell has worked on the error of fluorescence of super-resolution, which made it possible to visualize details with a ten times greater superior precision, attaining the resolution of a few nano-meters; thus the micro-scopes became nano-scopes. He has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Kavli Prize for Nano-Science and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2014.