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Tag: Vatican

President Aoun invites Pope to new Lebanon visit

5 months ago
President Michel Aoun re-invited Monday Pope Francis to visit Lebanon, urging him to continue supporting Lebanon, during a visit to the Vatican city. "Lebanon is in dire need for support," Aoun said in a meeting with the Pope, adding that he does not want Lebanon to "pay the price" for the region's conflicts. Aoun had […]
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Macron on Gulf tour in December

9 months ago
French President Emmanuel Macron will go on an official trip to the Gulf region, visiting Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar between Dec. 3 and 4, the Elysee presidential office said on Friday. France maintains strong relations with the Gulf States, in economic and cultural terms, but also in terms of security.  Macron held talks on Friday […]
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Lebanon's Maronite cleric wants best possible relations with Saudi, while Saudi calls for unified home front

1 year ago
Lebanon’s most senior Christian cleric said on Thursday he hoped for an improvement in ties with Saudi Arabia, which has withheld support for the crisis-torn Lebanese economy because of the rising influence of its arch-enemy Hezbollah. Lebanon is battling an economic meltdown that poses the worst threat to its stability since the 1975-1990 civil war. […]
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Pope wants Lebanese clerics to help unite country politically

1 year ago
Pope Francis has called on Lebanon’s leaders to put aside partisan interests and work to restore peace and stability in the crisis-hit country. The pontiff made the appeal at the end of a day-long summit with Lebanese Christian leaders in the Vatican on Thursday. Earlier Francis welcomed the Christian patriarchs for a day of prayer […]
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Pope meets Syrian father of drowned Kurdish boy

1 year ago
Pope Francis on Sunday met the father of Alan Kurdi, the boy whose body washed up on a Turkish beach six years ago became an image of the suffering of Syrians trying to escape war. The pontiff, winding up a historic trip to Iraq, met Abdullah Kurdi at the end of Mass in the Iraqi […]
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Pope leaves for Iraq, despite warnings

1 year ago
Pope Francis headed to Iraq on Friday for his most risky foreign trip since his election in 2012, and said he felt duty-bound to make the “emblematic” visit because the country had suffered so much for so long. An Alitalia plane carrying him, his entourage, a security detail, and about 75 journalists, left Rome’s Leonardo […]
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Pope Francis wants immediate end to war in Syria

2 years ago
Pope Francis has called for the war in Syria to end, noting that 2021 marks its 10th anniversary. In an audience with the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican, the leader of the Catholic Church also confirmed that his visit to Iraq, beginning on March 5, will mark the restart of his apostolic travels, which […]
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Pope Francis to talk with Sistani in March Iraq visit

2 years ago
Pope Francis is set for an historic meeting with Iraq’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, during a trip to Iraq planned for March, the patriarch of Iraq’s Chaldean Catholic Church said on Thursday. The visit, which eluded Francis’s predecessors, takes place amid deteriorating security in some parts of Iraq and after the […]
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Pope backtracks on Iraq visit, cites COVID as cause

2 years ago
Pope Francis said he is not sure if his trip to Iraq in March can take place because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He cast doubt on the trip, which would be the first by a pope to the country, in an interview with Italy’s Canale 5 broadcast on Sunday night. Francis spoke in a section […]
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Erdogan turns another historical church into mosque

2 years ago
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan reconverted the historic Chora church, one of Istanbul’s most celebrated Byzantine buildings, into a mosque on Friday, a month after opening the famed Hagia Sophia to Muslim worship. The mediaeval Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora, built near the ancient city walls of Constantinople, contains 14th century Byzantine mosaics and […]
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Pope wants peace in Libya

2 years ago
Pope Francis appealed on Sunday for both sides in the Libyan civil war to seek peace, urging the international community to facilitate talks and protect refugees and migrants he said were victims of cruelty. In an impassioned plea during his noon address in St. Peter’s Square, Francis said he was pained by the situation in […]
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Pope warns of humanitarian situation in Syria

3 years ago
Pope Francis has expressed concern for the humanitarian situation in northwestern Syria and urged a negotiated end to years of fighting, in a letter delivered on Monday to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Vatican said the letter was handed over by Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, who heads the Vatican department for promoting human development. […]
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Pope tacks sign on his apartment door: 'No Whining'

5 years ago
If anyone had any doubts how Pope Francis feels about people who always complain, the answer is now tacked to the door of his frugal suite in a Vatican residence: "No Whining". Under the explicit warning, the red-and-white Italian language sign goes on to say that "violators are subject to a syndrome of always feeling […]
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Pope shakes up Vatican by replacing conservative doctrinal chief

5 years ago
In a major shake-up of the Vatican's administration on Saturday, Pope Francis replaced Catholicism's top theologian, a conservative German cardinal who has been at odds with the pontiff's vision of a more inclusive Church. A brief Vatican statement said Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller's five-year mandate as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the […]
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Top papal adviser charged with sexual assault in blow to Vatican

5 years ago
Australian police charged a top adviser to Pope Francis with multiple historical sex crimes on Thursday, in a case that poses a dilemma for a pontiff who has vowed zero tolerance for such offences. Cardinal George Pell is the Vatican's de facto treasury minister and is the highest-ranking Vatican official to be charged with sexual […]
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