When an Israeli air raid destroyed Walaa Sobeh’s house and much of her neighbourhood, the Palestinian Muslim sought shelter in Gaza’s oldest church.
At the Church of Saint Porphyrius, she found not just sanctuary, but a feeling of belonging to “one family” — united by both the terror of bombs exploding around them and a hope that they could survive Israel’s attacks.
So she telephoned other relatives in north Gaza and asked them to make their way to the church, too. Sobeh and her family are among hundreds of Palestinians across different faiths who have found safety — at least for now — at the church.
At a time when the deadly Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza have sparked a surge in Islamophobia in parts of the world, the Greek Orthodox church has emerged as an emblem of a deeper identity as Palestinians.
“We are here living the day, not sure if we can make it to the night. But what eases our pain is the humble and warm spirit of everyone around,” Sobeh said. She described receiving “enormous support from the priests and other people in the church who volunteer tirelessly around the clock to help the displaced families”.
So far, the church has escaped Israeli missiles.
“The Israeli military has bombed many places of sanctuary,” said Father Elias, a priest at Saint Porphyrius, adding that he was “not sure that Israel won’t bomb the church”, even though it provides shelter for hundreds of civilians.
Israeli bombs have hit several mosques and schools sheltering people whose homes have been blown up.
Any strike on the church “would not only be an attack on religion, which is a vile deed, but also an attack on humanity”, Father Elias said. “Our humanity calls us to offer peace and warmth to everyone in need.”

Pope Francis and U.S. President Joe Biden spoke by phone on October 22 afternoon to discuss “the latest developments in Israel and Gaza,” according to a statement from the White House.
The Holy See Press Office said earlier the phone call lasted about 20 minutes and focused on “conflict situations in the world and the need to identify paths to peace.”
“The president condemned the barbarous attack by Hamas against Israeli civilians and affirmed the need to protect civilians in Gaza,” the White House statement said. The two also talked about Biden’s trip to Israel last week and his efforts at humanitarian assistance in the region.
The pope and the president also discussed “the need to prevent escalation in the region and to work toward a durable peace in the Middle East,” the White House said.
Earlier in the day, Pope Francis in his Sunday Angelus appealed for peace in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, which is entering its third week.

A recent official census of religious identity in Hungary offered bad news for those concerned with the future of Christianity in central Europe.
For the first time, a majority of Hungarians (56.6%) failed to declare membership of a faith tradition, with 16.5% declaring “no religion” and a further 40.1% choosing not to answer the question at all.
While all the country’s main denominations were hit badly, results for the Roman Catholic Church, historically the nation’s majority tradition, were worst of all — a drop of 1.1 million (nearly 30%), compared to 2011. The numbers went from an estimated 3.69 million people identifying as Catholics in 2011 to 2.6 million today.
Combined with a smaller loss between 2001 and 2011, Hungary’s Catholic population has shrunk an astounding 50% this century, to just 27.5% of the population.
These facts contrast starkly with the rhetoric of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s far-right prime minister, who has described ”Christian Hungary” as a supposed bulwark against immigration of Muslims and other religious minorities into Europe.

Pope Francis reaffirmed the impossibility of women becoming priests, or even modern Church deacons, in an interview for a book released October 24 in Italy.
The question of whether some women in the early Church were “deaconesses” or another kind of collaborator with the bishops is “not irrelevant, because holy orders is reserved for men,” the pope said.
The pope’s answers to questions about women’s roles in the Church were included in a book published in June in Spanish as “El Pastor: Desafíos, razones y reflexiones sobre su pontificado.”
The book, whose title means in English “The Shepherd: Struggles, Reasons, and Thoughts on His Papacy,” was released in Italian on Oct. 24. The Italian edition is titled “Non Sei Solo: Sfide, Risposte, Speranze,” or “You Are Not Alone: Challenges, Answers, Hopes.”
About the possibility of women deacons, Francis pointed out that the diaconate “is the first degree of holy orders in the Catholic Church, followed by the priesthood and finally the episcopate.”
He said he formed commissions in 2016 and 2020 to study the question further, after a study in the 1980s by the International Theological Commission established that the role of deaconesses in the early Church “was comparable to the benedictions of abbesses.”
In response to a question about why he is “against female priesthood,” Francis told Argentine journalist Sergio Rubin and Italian journalist Francesca Ambrogetti, the authors of the book, that it is “a theological problem.”
“I think we would undermine the essence of the Church if we considered only the priestly ministry, that is, the ministerial way,” he said, pointing out that women mirror Jesus’ bride the Church.
“The fact that the woman does not access ministerial life is not a deprivation, because her place is much more important,” he said. “I think we err in our catechesis in explaining these things, and ultimately we fall back on an administrative criterion that does not work in the long run.”

Pope Francis is constantly following what is happening in Gaza, reaching out to the small Christian community in the Strip by telephone.
Parish priest Father Gabriel Romanelli told Vatican News about two phone calls he has received from the Pope since  October 7. Fr. Romanelli is currently in Bethlehem and in constant contact with the faithful of his parish.
“The Pope called me a few minutes ago”, he said. “He expressed his closeness and offered his prayers.”
Fr. Romanelli said he “thanked him for his call for a ceasefire and a stop to all violence, all terrorism and all war.”
The Pope, he added, “wanted to show his closeness, and now he was going to call the community directly with my vicar helping people who are refugees in the parish.”

Christianity remains the most common religion among Asian Americans despite an overall decline in the number of people following religions, says the latest Pew survey.
“Despite recent declines, Christianity is still the most common religion among Asian Americans,” said the survey report released by Pew Research Center on Oct. 11.
According to the report, around 34 percent of Asian American adults identified their religion as Christianity in 2023, down from 42 percent in 2012.
Among the respondents who said they were Christians, around 17% were Catholics and 16% were Protestants. One-tenth of Asian Americans were Buddhists and Hindus, while Muslims were reported at six percent.
Other Asian religious groups including Daoists, Jains, Jews, and Sikhs together made up around four percent of all Asian American adults. Six Asian origin groups–Chinese, Filipino, Indi-an, Japanese, Korean, and Viet-namese Americans – made up around 81% of the roughly 7,000 Asian Americans surveyed.
The survey also looked at the various largest subgroups within Christianity, both Protestants and Catholics. The result showed an overall decline in numbers in 2023, compared to the previous survey conducted in 2012.
For example, Protestants had declined to 16 % in 2023 from 22 % in 2012. The Evangelicals who were included within the Protestant subgroup also showed a decline to 10 percent from 13 percent for the same period.
“The Catholic share is more stable,” the report said.
Followers of Catholicism were reported to have declined from 19 % in 2012 to 17 % in 2023.
The survey also analyzed how Asian Americans identify themselves as “close” to Christianity despite being non-adherent to any specific religion.
“Many who do not identify with a specific religion still say they consider themselves close to the religious or philosophical traditions that are common in their country of ancestry,” the report said.
Around 18% of Asian Americans, while not identifying as Christians, said that they feel “close to” Christianity “aside from religion” for reasons such as family background or culture.
In total, 40 % of Asian American adults express a connection to one or more groups that they do not claim a religious identity.

Two children scribbled petitions to St. Gabriele dell’Addolorata in the vast sanctuary where the young saint is venerated in this central Italian mountain village. Andrea, 6, asked for blessings for his family and pets. Sofia, 9, gave thanks for winning a dance competition.
Their parents bring them here often, as their father’s own family did, and consider themselves better Catholics than many. The mother, Carmela Forino, even says a prayer for forgiveness when she hears someone utter a common blasphemy on the sanctuary esplanade.
But they rarely go to Mass and don’t receive Communion because they are not married, thus shunning two sacraments the Catholic Church considers foundational.
“I practice where I want. Every morning I pray on my own,” Forino said in the sanctuary room filled with votive offerings, from baby bibs to sports jerseys, left by 2 million annual visitors to San Gabriele. “One has to believe in something, right? You do what you feel in your heart. You can’t require me to go to Mass on Sundays.”
Elsewhere in deeply secular Western Europe, the “nones” — those rejecting organized religion — are growing fast. In Italy, long considered the cradle of the Catholic faith, most people retain a nominal affiliation, steeped in tradition but with little adherence to doctrine or practice.
According to the latest Pew Research Center survey, 78% of Italians profess to be Catholic. But the Italian statistics agency, ISTAT, says only 19% attend services at least weekly while 31% never attend.

Climate activists across the globe have thanked Pope Francis for his new exhortation on the environment titled Laudate Deum, published ahead of a major UN climate summit, calling the text “prophetic” and saying action is needed now more than ever.
Benoit Halgand, co-founder of the French youth organizations “For an Ecological Awakening” and “Struggle and Contemplation,” during an Oct. 5 press conference at the Vatican warned that “mankind is on the verge of destroying its very conditions of existence.”
Amid what he said is “all the skeptical, relativistic and techno-solutionist rhetoric” about the climate issue, Halgand voiced gratitude for “Pope Francis’ clear-sighted and firm reminder of the urgency of climate and social issues.”
He highlighted what he said were three “prophetic” aspects of the pope’s new apostolic exhortation on the environment, which includes a strong rejection of skepticism about global warming and the consequences of human intervention in the environment, including those within the Church.
Francis also criticized wealthy nations, especially the United States, for disproportionately causing the emissions that scientists believe drive global warming.
Pope rips climate skepticism, faults US for emissions in new eco-manifesto
In his remarks, Halgand praised the exhortation’s call for “a strong civil society and a political response to the ecological crisis,” as well as its insistence on the urgency of continuing to move away from fossil fuels.

Margaret Karram is an Arab Christian who grew up in Haifa and has headed the Focolare Movement for the past two years. Taking part in the Synod roundtables in the Paul VI Hall, she has been following recent events in her homeland torn by the war between Israel and Hamas.
Speaking about her own turmoil, she said: “A short while ago, a Jewish friend called me. She told me: From now on I have decided that I will pray at the same time as my Muslim friends. Even if there are many things that divide us, I will do it with a deep heartbreak because I know that, at this moment, I am united with them, at least in prayer.”
This morning, the ongoing tragedy in Israel and Gaza dominated the prayer that starts the day at the Synod. Cardinal Louis Sako led it. As patriarch of Baghdad, he comes from another land wounded by war over the past 20 years, where the wounds of Iraqi Christians have reopened in recent weeks.
Margaret Karram and Sister Caroline Jarjis, a nun from Baghdad, witnesses representing Eastern Churches and the Middle East, made the invocation for peace reading a passage from the Gospel in Arabic. Their testimony today was also at the heart of the daily briefing with the journalists present at the Synod.
“I asked myself what am I doing here?” said the Focolare president. “Should I not do something else to promote peace at this time? But then I said to myself: Here too I can join the Pope Francis’s call and everyone’s prayer.
“With my brothers and sisters from every corner of the world we can ask God for the gift of peace. Many steps can be taken for peace, but I believe in the power of prayer. Moreover, the Gospel in today’s liturgy also says so: Knock and the door will be opened to you, ask and you will receive.”

On the opening day of the Synod on Synodality, a leading official of the process urged participants to read “the signs of the times” in order to “discover a grammar of synodality for our time.”
“Just like the grammar of our languages changes as they develop, so does the grammar of synodality: It changes with time,” said Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the relator general of the 16th Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, in prepared remarks at the start of the afternoon session.
Discovering a new grammar of synodality, a term that means “journeying together,” may be the stated goal of the synod, which will continue throughout the month and conclude with a final assembly in October 2024. But on its opening day, synod leaders also highlighted the many ways in which the current gathering breaks the mold of past Synods of Bishops.
Cardinal Mario Grech noted that, for “the first time,” the inclusion of non-bishops in the synod, including “laymen and laywomen, religious men and women, deacons, and presbyters, who are no longer ‘exceptions to the norm,’ but full members of the assembly.”