On 22 September, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev), the “Foreign Minister” of the Moscow Patriarchate, delivered an important speech at a conference organized by the Russian Embassy in London in front of diplomats, politicians, entrepreneurs and exponents of the major religious confessions.

The Metropolitan’s address developed the main theses that have marked the positions of the Russian Orthodox Church in recent years, especially Patriarch Kirill’s (Gundjaev), calls to Europe and the West. These are the positions which largely inspired President Putin’s policy, at least in terms of the ethical aspects of relations between Russia and the superpowers of the globalized world.

The speech focused on the future of Europe, and in particular on the conditions of Christianity in the old continent. According to Hilarion, who cited several recent statistics, Christianity today is the most persecuted religion in the world, and also faces new challenges that question the “moral foundations of people’s lives, their faith, and their values.”

A leading Australian bishop says the Church in his country is facing the biggest crisis in its history after taking part in talks with the Vatican over how to address the problem.

The Archbishop of Brisbane, Mark Coleridge, who is Vice President of the Australian Bishops’ Conference, told The Tablet that he and fellow bishops were in Rome to discuss the fallout of the clerical sexual abuse crisis, and how the Church will adopt a new approach. This, he says, will look at how to include women in positions of “governance.”

High on the agenda at the Vatican summit was Australia’s Royal Commission inquiry into how institutions handled child sexual abuse. This has seen the Catholic Church facing unrelenting criticism for its response to the scandal. The problem has been magnified after the Australian police’s decision to charge Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican treasurer and former Archbishop of Sydney, with historic sexual offences.

The Royal Commission has already had a huge impact on the Church in Australia, and the Final Report will make the impact still greater. The Church has been shaken to the core, or as one well-informed voice has said, “It has broken the heart of the Church in this land.” Yet there’s a searing grace in this, summoning the whole Church to a greater authenticity. In this, the call of the Royal Commission and the call of Pope Francis converge in what looks to be one of the strange disruptions of the Holy Spirit. Abp. Mark Coleridge said. The big question is how we become a more inclusive Church without abandoning truths of the faith we have received rather than concocted.

Pope Francis appears to have responded indirectly to the four cardinals who publicly challenged him last year over his most recent teachings on family life, as contained in the 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

In a question and answer session with members of the Jesuit order in Colombia earlier this month, the text of which was made public for the first time Sept. 28, the Pope referenced those who “maintain that there is no Catholic morality underlying Amoris Laetitia, or at least, no sure morality.”

“I want to repeat clearly that the morality of Amoris Laetitia is Thomist, the morality of the great Thomas,” said Francis, referring to 13th century Dominican theologian St Thomas Aquinas.

“I want to say this so that you can help those who believe that morality is purely casuistic,” the Pope told the Jesuits, according to a text of the encounter published Sept. 28 by La Civiltà  Cattolica.” Help them understand that the great Thomas possesses the greatest richness, which is still able to inspire us today.”

Four cardinals wrote to Francis in September 2016 with five yes or no questions about how he understood Church teaching following publication of the apostolic exhortation. After not receiving a response to their letter, the cardi-nals made their letter public in November 2016.

Francis visited Colombia from Sept. 6-11 and met privately with about 65 Jesuits Sept. 10 during his visit to the city of Cartagena. The Pope spoke about Amoris Laetitia in response to a question from a Jesuit about what kind of theological and philosophical questioning he wants the wider Church to undertake.

He said first that he does not want philosophy to be undertaken “in a laboratory, but in life, in dialogue with reality.” He referred to how Pope Benedict XVI had spoken of truth “as an encounter, that is to say no longer as a type of classification, but a path.”

A Slovak priest who died from torture and radiation poisoning after forced labour in Czechoslovakia’s uranium mines is the Catholic Church’s latest communist-era martyr to be beatified.

Fr Titus Zeman, a Salesian of Don Bosco who died in 1969, was hailed during a beatification Mass Sept. 30 in Petrzalka Park in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava, the Catholic News Service reported. He was beatified by Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Saints’ Causes, also a member of the Salesian religious order.

The Vatican official said Blessed Zeman had been under “genuine persecution” in the years following World War II as the newly installed communist government arrested clergy and suppressed Catholic schools and associations. However, during his priesthood, he had shown “love is stronger than hatred.”

Born in 1915, Zeman joined the Salesians in 1932 and was ordained in 1940.

George’s mother is buried at Iqrit in Galilee, near the border with Lebanon. In 1948, the village of Iqrit was declared a military zone by the Israeli state and the inhabitants, all Catholics, were relocated. In 1951, a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court authorized their return. However, the army ignored the decision and completely destroyed the village, with the exception of the church and cemetery. Since 2014, photographer Constance Decorde has regularly visited Iqrit.  She bears witness to the struggle of a whole community to regain the right to live in the village of their ancestors.

In some places, they are deprived of the right to build or renovate their churches. Elsewhere they are not eligible for social benefits, or to go to university. In most countries of the Middle East, Christians are not citizens like the others.

They are often refused access to top administration posts, in the army or politics. The idea is to prevent them from exercising any power whatsoever over Muslims.

In Egypt, that was why the post of Vice President promised to a Copt by former president Mohammed Morsi, who was close to the Muslim Brotherhood, was changed surreptitiously to “assistant for the political transition” in 2012. In Iraq, the situation is becoming worse. Based on medieval Islamic law, judges are now refusing to admit Christians as witnesses in trials. The urgent need to guarantee their survival in countries where their existence is most threatened should not hide the other struggle of Christians living in the Near East: the fight for citizenship.

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.”

But others appear sincere. A 25-year-old Iranian Kurd now called Silas told NPR studying Islam brought disillusionment. Reading the Bible for the first time in a camp on Germany’s border with Poland prompted questions. “By getting baptized we have to say goodbye to our home country because we can never go back. But we accept this. The Muslim god in Iran was angry and strict, but Jesus accepts us as we are,” an Iranian named Medhi told Germany’s Der Spiegel.