Pope Francis has issued a public correction to an article by Cardinal Robert Sarah about the changes the pontiff made last month to how the Catholic Church’s liturgies are to be translated from the original Latin into local languages.

In the correction, which takes the form of a letter to Sarah but the Pope asks to be posted at the same websites where the cardinal’s article first appeared, Francis makes clear the Vatican is no longer to undertake a “detailed word-by-word exam” of translations they receive from the world’s local bishops’ conferences.

Francis says the new motu proprio Magnum Principium (“The Great Principle”), released on September 9, “grants the episcopal conferences the faculty to judge the worth and coherence of one or another phrase in the translations from the original.”

“The process of translating relevant liturgical texts into a language … must not bring a spirit of ‘imposition’ over the episcopal conferences with a translation handed down from the Dicastery, as that would betray the right of bishops as set forth in canon law,” the Pope tells the cardinal.

Sarah is the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, which tradi-tionally has had authority over liturgical translations.

Francis’ correction, sent out by the Vatican press office on Oct. 22, is a response to an article by Sarah that appeared in the October 14 edition of the French magazine L’Homme Nouveau and was then posted in Italian on several other websites.

In his article, Sarah had claimed that the Pope’s motu proprio did not change his congregation’s authority to impose new translations on bishops’ conferences when the congregation decided the bishops’ efforts did not match the original Latin texts closely enough.

God is still in the business of deliver-ing His servants, no matter what cynics say. This was amply demonstrated in Ebonyi State when kidnappers who abducted a Catholic priest dozed off after drinking the holy communion wine found in the parish.

After observing that they were asleep, Reverend Father Timothy Nwanja who was kidnapped on October 15th sunday night in his residence at St Mary’s Parish in Okpokueze Nkomoro commu-nity, Imoha Development Centre of Ezza North Local Government Area, and taken to an uncomplet-ed building in the area, jumped out of the window and escaped.

The Ebonyi Police Command Public Relations Officer (PPRO), ASP Loveth Odah confirmed that the Catholic priest and his cook were rescued.

“The priest was having dinner when the kidnappers sneaked into his room not knowing that his cook had gone upstairs to get water from the refrigerator.

“They abducted her; and on hearing her scream, the priest ran upstairs to know what was going on and they also abducted him. “They took him away in his own vehicle, blindfolded and blocked his ears so that he won’t be able to listen to their conver-sation,” the police spokesperson said. Odah said that the kidna-ppers later separated the priest and cook, fortunately the former jumped out through the window of the uncompleted building where he was taken to.

“The kidnappers had taken Holy Communion wine while in the priest’s house and subse-quently dozed off which enabled the priest to escape.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia believes that moral sense shared by all nations should be laid in basis of legislation in every country of the modern world.

“No matter how different our countries, nations and establishments are, we all have moral sense, each of us has the voice of conscience, in other words, our differences are above basis, while moral sense is our true basis, it is truly universal characteristic of a human nature given to us from the birth. It is not constructed by someone who invented “true” universal values, and can correct them or “improve” in favour of certain political, ideological or even financial interests,” the patriarch said at the 137th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly held in Petersburg.

The primate of the Russian Church attracted attention of the MPs to the fact that moral teaching of various religious traditions contains “co-incidence, appeal to human conscience,” Christians call it “the voice of God in our hearts.” “It is not by chance that we speak about “the golden rule of morality,” which in the language of Gospels say: do to others as you would have them do to you. To my point of view, a possibility of moral consensus for people is based on this profound experience,” Patriarch Kirill stressed.

When the centenary of the Bolshevik revolution falls this autumn, Christian com-munities across the former Soviet Union will comme-morate the persecutions it unleashed upon them.

But they’ll also recall the religious meditations born in the country’s prisons and labour camps, some of which deserve to rank with the best in Christian history.

Though often viewed as an epoch of cultural and spiritual emptiness, Soviet rule produced profound Christian works of prose and poetry, offering vital reflections on a resilient faith.

The revolution’s mastermind, Vladimir Lenin, had sworn to emasculate Russia’s Orthodox clergy — those “agents in cassocks” who had been used by the Tsar to “sweeten and embellish the lot of the oppressed with empty promises of a heavenly kingdom.”

To call it the “opium of the people” was too kind, Lenin had written in 1909, paraphrasing Karl Marx. It was rather “a kind of spiritual rotgut, by which the slaves of capital blacken their human figure and their aspirations for a more dignified human life.”

Hundreds of Muslim refugees have converted to Christianity across Europe in recent years, according to church leaders, but motives vary. In Austria, the rolls of Catholic churches swelled with Muslim immigrants, leading to new guidelines for baptism to ensure sincere faith. Other churches in Lebanon, Germany, and England also report growing numbers of Muslim refugee converts from Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Bangladesh, and Eritrea.

Bishop George Saliba of Beirut, Lebanon, told PRI he has baptized about 100 Syrian refugees since 2011. In another Beirut church, a pastor meets with Syrian refugees to teach them “Christian doctrines” from Scripture. He requested anonymity out of fear of Islamist reprisals but said dozens of Bible study groups for Syrian refugees now meet in Lebanon.

No national statistics exist, but many local churches across Europe attest to the influx of Muslim refugees seeking to become Christians. Still, they remain a small fraction of the millions of Muslims in Europe.

According to The Guardian, European mosques turned away many homeless and impoverished Muslim refugees seeking assistance. They found help and a warm welcome in churches.

Reasons for conversion vary, from “heartfelt faith,” to gratitude to the Christians assisting them, to hope that it could boost their chances for gaining asylum, The Guardian reported. One Muslim in Germany admitted to NPR he might convert in order to avoid deportation back to Afghanistan, where his “life will be in danger.”

A retired bishop who led Brazil’s largest territorial diocese for some 34 years says he’s hoping the 2019 special Synod for the Pan-Amazon region will lead to the ordination of married men to the priesthood and women to the permanent diaconate.

Bishop Erwin Kräutler, an Austrian-born missionary who headed the sprawling Diocese of Xingu in the Brazilian rain forest from 1981-2015, told Kathpress that the “horrend-ous” priest shortage has left the indigenous people of the Amazon deprived of the Eucharist.

The 78-year-old bishop, who is still secretary of the Brazilian bishops’ commission for the Amazon region, said in an October 19th interview with the Austrian Catholic news agency that this disastrous pastoral situation means 90% of the Catholic faithful in the region could not celebrate the Eucharist regularly.

Bishop Kräutler said Catholics in the Amazon were limited to celebrating…

The number of Catholics in the world increased by 12.5 million in 2015 to a total of nearly 1.3 billion people. Figures reported by the Fides News Service show an increase on all continents, except Europe. Africa saw 7.4 million new Catholics, North and South America 4.8 million, Asia 1.6 million and Oceania 123,000. Europe’s Catholic population decreased by 1.3 million. Despite the rise, the world percentage of Catholics decreased by 0.05% to 17.72%, due to the total world population growing at an even faster rate. Oceania had the highest percentage increase at 0.24%, however the percentage of people in North and South America identifying as Catholic decreased by 0.08% despite a rise in the total number. The percentage of Europeans identifying as Catholic decreased by 0.21%.

As a little boy in Sunday school, Bassem Al-Janoubie was fascinated by the illustrated stories about the martyrs of Egypt’s Coptic Church.

“Even more than cartoon comic books, the dramatic events and details of the ordeal of each saint held my attention,” remembers the now-40-year-old graphic designer. “They were like superheroes – not accepting attempts to change their beliefs or efforts to get them to deny their Christianity despite torture and even death.”

The 2,000-year-old Coptic Church of Egypt has a long tradition of hallowing those who died affirming their faith in the face of violence.

The issue has been most recently punctuated by the deadly knifing of a Coptic priest in a poor Cairo neighbourhood on Oct. 12. A suspect was arrested but his motive is still unknown.

Recently, another Coptic priest — the well-known Rev. Boules George from the well-heeled Cairo suburb of Heliopolis — took to the television airwaves to “thank” the Islamic State terrorists who launched the Palm Sunday church bombings that claimed 45 lives, saying they provided “a rocket” that delivered victims straight to heaven.

Many Copts rejected that assertion. “This death doctrine is terrifying,” said Jacqueline Ezzat, 21. “Jesus died for a cause and a purpose. Those who die in violence are lost to us for no reason. Father Boules’ doctrine is insidious. It’s like he wants us Christians to be zombies.”

Comprising an estimated 10% of Egypt’s 90 million people, the Coptic Church is the largest Christian denomination in the Middle East and North Africa. This summer, Raphael imple-mented an Egyptian Interior Ministry directive to suspend church events in difficult-to-secure locations in order to minimize exposure to new attacks. “The fact that we receive death with a spiritual philosophy does not mean that our blood is cheap,” said the bishop.

The persecution of Christians are worse than at any time in history, according to a new report that was issued on Oct. 12, 2017. The “Persecuted and Forgotten?” report concludes that the perse-cution of Christians reached a high water mark in 2015-17—with growing attacks on the faithful by ISIS, Boko Haram, and other extremist groups.

The new report, produced by international papal charity Aid to the Church in Need, also identified growing problems in a number of Muslim-majority countries and authoritarian states, such as Eritrea and North Korea.

“Persecuted and Forgotten?” found that members of China’s 127 million-strong Christian population have suffered growing persecution following new attempts to bring Christianity in line with communist ideals. More than 2,000 churches and crosses have been pulled down in China’s coastal Province of Zhejiang—and clergy are still being routinely detained by authorities.

In Iraq, more than half of the country’s Christian population became internal refugees and Syria’s second city of Aleppo, which until 2011 was home to the largest Christian community, saw numbers dropping from 150,000 to barely 35,000 by spring 2017—a fall of more than 75%. Extremism has been a growing problem in Africa—particularly in Nigeria where ISIS affiliate Boko Haram has displaced more than 1.8 million people.

Pro-life advocates have made a lot of progress changing hearts and minds for life in the past decade. From 2008 to 2014, the abortion rate dropped a full 25%, according to a new report in the American Journal of Public Health.

Looking at data from the federal government and the Guttmacher Institute, the researchers found that abortions dropped from 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age (15 to 44) in 2008 to 14.6 per 1,000 in 2014, the Washington Post reports. Researchers said the biggest decline was in the 15 to 19 age group, at 46%. The abortion rate also dropped for the first time in 20 years for the poorest women in America – the demographic with the highest abortion rate, according to the group. The report found that abortion numbers dropped below 1 million in the United States for the first time in four decades.

The pro-abortion research group, considered to have the most comprehensive abortion numbers for the U.S., reported an estimated 926,200 abortions in 2014 and 958,700 in 2013. The abortion rate (the number of abortions per 1,000 women of childbearing age) also dropped to 14.6 per 1,000 in 2014, down 14% from 2011, according to the report.