October 23, 2015, Friday — From Russia to Rome "The word mother can be traced back cleanly to Proto-Indo-European, as can father, brother and sister -- it appears in cognate form in languages like Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and so forth, and it may go back further." —Discussion of the origin of the word "mother" on an [...]
October 7, 2015, Wednesday — Mortality "Every life is sacred, every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes." —Pope Francis, on Thursday, September 24, in his address to the U.S. Congress during his visit to America; he called for the "global abolition" [...]
June 28, 2015, Sunday — Pope-Patriarch Meeting "On Agenda," Hilarion Says Are Rome and Moscow growing closer, despite US-led Western efforts to isolate Russia with recently renewed economic sanctions? A new interview published this morning in Italy suggests strongly that the answer is "Yes." Following a lightning visit three weeks ago (June 10) of Russian president [...]
June 10, 2015, Wednesday — Putin and Pope Francis President Putin came to Pope Francis this evening to speak about possible pathways to peace in Ukraine and the Middle East. Putin, who had been in Milan in northern Italy at a major international exposition on food worldwide, arrived a little after 6 p.m. -- about an [...]
May 26, 2015, Tuesday — Dry Tinder On May 24-25, the IX sessional meeting of the Ordinary Council of the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops of the Catholic Church was held at the Vatican. The meeting was chaired by Pope Francis. The meeting agenda included preparation of a draft text Instrumentum Laboris ("Guideline of Work") [...]
December 15, 2014, Monday — 1st Annual Dinner"How did it happen that the country known as ‘Holy Russia’, with such a long history of Orthodox Christianity, was, in a very short period of time, turned by the Bolsheviks into ‘the first atheist state in the world’?" —Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the "Foreign Minister" of the Russian Orthodox [...]
An armed pro-Russian separatist stands at the site in eastern Ukraine where a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crashed on July 17. The precise cause of the crash was not clear in the days after it occurred (CNS photo/Maxim Zmeyev, Reuters). A British priest who is a leading scholar in the field of ecumenism, [...]
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia. Blood is again shed in Ukraine. The clashes in the Donetsk Region and tragic events in Odessa have led to the deaths of tens of people and further destabilization of the situation in the country. Many are in despair and fear for their lives and the lives [...]
February 19, 2014, Wednesday – Ukraine -- End Game "With a troubled heart I am following what is happening in Kiev. I assure the Ukrainian people of my closeness and I pray for the victims of the violence, for their families and for the injured. I call on all sides to stop every violent action and [...]
When it was the heart of the Soviet Union, Russia embraced a communist ideology that denied the existence of God and the eternity of the human soul, calling such beliefs socially harmful mystifications. Today, in 2013, Russia is quite dramatically preaching traditional Christian faith and values -- to the consternation of many secular thinkers in the once-Christian West.
