Whose appointment as archbishop was confirmed by Pope Francis on Jan. 7, shared the difficult times he spent being held hostage by the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group and the importance of the “spirit of forgiveness.”
In a statement to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language sister news agency, Father Jacques Mourad, elected archbishop of Homs, Syria, by the Synod of Bishops of the Patriarchal Church of Antioch of the Syrians, Eastern-rite Catholics in communion with Rome, recalled that when he was kidnapped by ISIS along with a postulant from his congregation, the jihadists were trying to “convert us to Islam.”
However, despite the risk of death, he recalled in that situation how other Christians “had the courage and enthusiasm to respond in order to testify to their faith.”
Despite the danger our lives were in, he stressed, “we are disciples of Jesus crucified and risen.”
It was precisely under these conditions, he noted, that he learned “a magnificent example of forgiveness.”
“One of the jihadists condemned me to death, put a knife to my neck, and threatened me,” he said.
“I didn’t feel anger, nor hatred, nor any feeling of violence against him,” Mourad said

Around 28% of Poland’s Catholics attended Mass in 2021, according to the latest official statistics.
The new figures were said to indicate a ”dramatic fall” in church attendance in one of Europe’s most Catholic countries.
On Jan. 13, the Institute for Catholic Church Statistics (ISKK) released its 2021 “Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae in Polonia,” a yearly numerical overview of Poland’s Catholic Church.
Since 1980, the institute has reported the percentage of “dominicantes” (Sunday Mass-goers) and “communicantes” (recipients of Holy Communion) out of the total number of baptized Catholics who are able to fulfill the obligation to attend weekly Mass on a given Sunday each year.
Its latest report said that 28.3% were present at Sunday Mass when a headcount was taken on Sept. 26, 2021, while 12.9% received Communion.
This marked a notable drop compared to the last time the numbers were published in 2019 — no Sunday Mass figures were issued for the pandemic year of 2020.
In 2019, the figure for dominicantes was 36.9% and communicantes 16.7%, so the proportion of dominicantes fell by 8.6% and communicantes by 3.8% between 2019 and 2021.
The annual report breaks the statistics down by diocese. The diocese with the highest percentage of dominicantes and communicantes in 2021 is Tarnów, in southeastern Poland, with 59.1% and 21.9% respectively, while Szczecin-Kamieñ archdiocese, in northwestern Poland, recorded just 16.9% and 8.1% respectively. Tarnów is known as Poland’s ”most religious” diocese, while Szczecin-Kamieñ is considered its least religious — testifying to wide regional disparities in religious practice.
The “Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae in Polonia” also contains figures for other sacraments. The latest report says that in 2021 there were 315,357 baptisms (compared to 312,082 in 2020), 331,744 first Holy Communions (297,951 in 2020), 265,681 confirmations (252,253 in 2020), and 103,807 Catholic weddings (91,468 in 2020).
Finally, the annual report offers a statistical profile of the Polish Church. In 2021, it says, the country had 10,352 Catholic parishes, 23,984 priests incardinated in dioceses, and 1,341 diocesan seminarians. Some 82% of students attended Church-run religion classes in the 2021-22 school year.

Pope Francis did not need to launch listening sessions for the Synod of Bishops for people to discover there are tensions in the Catholic Church, said the cardinal serving as the synod’s relator general.
“We do not need the synod in the Catholic Church in order to experience tensions,” Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, relator general of the synod, told reporters at the Vatican Jan. 23. “These tensions come from the fact that each one honestly wants to see or share how we can follow Christ and proclaim Christ in the world today. That is the source of tension.”

Pope Benedict XVI has had a book of essays published posthumously in which he defends the unique character of the Mass and the Catholic priesthood and attacks rising intolerance in the increasingly atheistic West.
In the book, which is called What Christianity Is, the German pope, who died aged 95 on New Year’s Eve, warned Catholics in particular of the danger of a “radical manipulation of human beings” and “the distortion of the sexes by gender ideology”.
He wrote that although the intolerance of modernity towards the Christian faith “has not yet turned into open persecution … it manifests itself in an increasingly authoritarian way with the aim of achieving, by appropriate legislation, the eradication of what is essentially Christian”.
There are 16 essays in the book, four of which are previously unpublished. Benedict dated a preface May 1, 2022, and told Elio Guerriero, an assistant who helped him to compile the essays, that he did not wish the book to be published until his death.
“I do not want to publish anything else in my life,” Guerriero said Benedict told him, according to news reports.

Pope Francis has addressed a wide variety of topics – from the death of Benedict XVI, criticism of Fracncis’ papacy, homosexuality, relations with China, the case of Father Rupnik, and even his “good” health despite his age – in an interview released today by the Associated Press, an American news agency. It is the pontiff’s first interview since the death, on 31 December 2022, of his predecessor Joseph Ratzinger, whose character Pope Francis outlines in his interview with correspondent Nicole Winfield, which took place on Tuesday at Casa Santa Marta.
The Pope described Benedict XVI as “a gentleman” and said that with his death “I lost a father”: “For me, he was a security. When faced with doubt, I would call for the car, go to the monastery and ask [him about it].” Asked once again asked about the possibility of resignation, the Pope said that if he ever renounced the Petrine ministry, he would use the title “bishop emeritus of Rome” and live in the Casa del Clero (a residence for clergy) in Rome.” “Benedict’s experience,” he added, already gives future popes greater freedom to choose to resign.

Although numbers haven’t changed sub-stantially from the previous year, 2022 was the worst year for Christians worldwide, due to an intensifying level of violence discrimi-nation and exclusion, according to the late-st World Watch List released by Open Doors, a watchdog group that advocates for Christians.
The report, which was presented on Wednesday at the Italian Parliament in Rome, ranks the fifty countries where Christians face the worst persecution.
According to the data reported, more than 360 million Christians suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith. Similar numbers were recorded last year. However, the score of the indicators in the fifty countries at risk is growing.
In the previous report, the Pyongyang had been replaced by Afghanistan, following the Talebani takeover in August  2021. The latter’s ranking has dropped to the ninth  place, not because of any improvement, but for the simple reason that most Christians present there have fled the country. Conversion from Islam to another faith is punished with death in Afghanistan. The tiny local Christian community is,  therefore, forced to live in clandestinity.
North Korea is followed by Somalia, Yemen, Eritrea, Lybia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Iran,  all of  which are facing either war or internal strife,  or are under authoritarian regimes, as in the case of Eritrea and Iran..
In terms of absolute numbers Christians killed in 2022 have slightly decreased from 5,621 to 5,898.  Also, the number of churches attacked or closed decreased by more than half from over five thousand in 2021 to just over two thousand last year. China has played major role in this cutback, with one thousand incidents against three thousand in the previous year.
On the other hand, however, 2022 has seen a drastic increase in abductions of Christians, from 3,829 to 5,259. Almost five thousand are concentrated in three countries: Nigeria, Mo-zambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where in recent days Islamists have claimed a bomb attack against a Pentecostal church in the eastern Congolese town of Ka-sindi, which killed 14 people and injured 39.

Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether – even as faith continues to dominate American politics.
As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country – a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic.
About 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the last year data is available, with about 3,000 new churches opening, according to Lifeway Research. It was the first time the number of churches in the US hadn’t grown since the evangelical firm started studying the topic. With the pandemic speeding up a broader trend of Americans turning away from Christianity, researchers say the closures will only have accelerated.
Protestant pastors reported that typical church attendance is only 85% of pre-pandemic levels, McConnell said, while research by the Survey Center on American Life and the University of Chicago found that in spring 2022 67% of Americans reported attending church at least once a year, compared with 75% before the pandemic.

The wonders we see in the universe “should draw us out of ourselves,” an Ivy League scientist said last week, “looking out not just towards the wonders themselves and towards the truths they reveal, but also towards the source of all truths and the ultimate Creator of all things.”
Karin Öberg, professor of astronomy and director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University, said her work as a scientist has helped her to appreciate that we live in a universe that “has a beginning, a middle, and an end that’s unfolding over time.”
She also said that belief in God, far from being an impediment to scientific inquiry, actually can be helpful for scientists because of the “sure foundation” that belief in a Creator provides. Öberg herself is a convert from atheism.
“I think we should feel quite confident that having a true philosophy, and a true religion, should make it easier to make scientific discoveries, and not the opposite,” Öberg said in a Jan. 13 speech.
Karin Öberg delivers a keynote address at the Wonder Conference on Jan. 13, 2023. Credit: Word on Fire/Screenshot
Öberg delivered the second keynote address Jan. 13 at the Wonder Conference, organized by the Catholic media apostolate Word on Fire, which took place in Grapevine, Texas, and attracted about 1,000 participants.
Öberg, a Swedish-born scientist who serves on the board of the international Society of Catholic Scientists, primarily studies the formation of stars and planets. The “empty” space between stars — what’s known as the “interstellar medium” — is not actually empty at all but contains vast quantities of gas and dust. Over millions of years, interstellar clouds can start to collapse in on themselves, and that is how stars form, Öberg said.
Many scientists today and in the past have been guided in their scientific inquiry by their faith, Öberg said.

An exiled priest, Father Erick Díaz, and a human rights defender, attorney Yader Morazán, have charged that the dictatorship of President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua is manipulating and “fabricating” witnesses for the trial that it is preparing against the bishop of Matagalpa, Rolando Álvarez.
Díaz, who lives in exile in the United States after leaving his country in September 2022, said on Facebook that the regime “has fabricated” a list of witnesses “to testify against Bishop Rolando.”
The prelate has been a critic of the abuses of the Ortega dictatorship. Beginning Aug. 4, 2022, the Nicaraguan police surrounded the chancery when he and a group of priests, seminarians, and a layman were inside and forcibly confined them for two weeks, until around 3 a.m. on Aug. 19, when they broke into the building and hauled everyone away.
All were taken to the capital of Managua, where the bishop is being held under house arrest, and the others are incarcerated in “El Chipote” prison, notorious for torturing political prisoners.
At a Jan. 10 hearing, amid complaints of irregularities in the proceedings, the court hearing his case determined that Álvarez, accused of “conspiracy” and spreading “fake news” against the regime, will be brought to trial.

On Jan 22, 2023 Pope Francis celebrated a special Mass mark-ing the Day of the Word of God, during which he conferred the ministry of lector on seven lay people, five of them women, and said the Gospel is intended primarily for the sick and far away.
Francis formally opened the ministry of lector, along with that of acolyte, to women in a 2021 decree. He established the Day of the Word of God on the third Sunday in ordinary time in 2019.
In his homily for the Jan. 22 Mass, the pope noted that Jesus in the scriptures is “always on the move, on his way to others.”
“On no occasion in his public life does he give us the idea that he is a stationary teacher, a professor seated on a chair; on the contrary, we see him as an itinerant and a pilgrim, travelling through towns and villages, encountering faces and their stories,” he said.
In the Gospels, Jesus uses the Word of God to heal and lift people out of darkness, Francis said, insisting that the Word of God is not only destined “for the right-eous of Israel, but for all.”
Jesus, he said, wants to reach “those far away, he wants to heal the sick, he wants to save sinners, he wants to gather the lost sheep and lift up those whose hearts are weary and oppressed. Jesus ‘reaches out’ to tell us that God’s mercy is for everyone.”