Aleppo, Syria, Apr 6, 2017 / 02:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The attitude of Christians in Aleppo seems to have improved since Syrian government forces re-took the city, and they believe the prayers of Christians abroad have helped them, one religious sister reports.
Sister Maria Sponsa Iusti Ioseph, a native of Peru, told CNA that the Christians in Aleppo have received with love the words of Pope Francis.
When government forces took the city from rebels in December, the sisters told the faithful “that the Holy Father is praying for us and a lot of people in the world are too.”
“They really appreciate that and they feel protected by the prayers of Christians,” Sister Maria Sponsa said. “At the same time they feel very happy because they know that their suffering is not in vain, but it helps the people in the West. If they know that there are conversions because of that offering, that gives them a lot of strength to go on.”
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Jan. 30, 2021
Deep sadness overwhelmed David Fishman last summer when the National Library announced that it was closing its doors temporarily under the constraints of the coronavirus pandemic. Although Prof. Fishman lives a very long way from the reading rooms of the Jerusalem institution, his study of the heroic operation to rescue Jewish books during the Holocaust had brought home to him how crucial they are for the spiritual and cultural survival of humanity.
In a conversation from his home in New York last month, he said, verging on tears, that he found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that the protagonists of his book – a group of Vilna Ghetto prisoners – had risked their lives to rescue volumes from the clutches of the Germans 80 years ago, but now the Jewish state was being forced to shut down libraries because of the epidemic.
Two priests, a queen, a pope and a book
The book that Paremmakkal Thomman Kathanar began to write in 1785 describing his travel to Lisbon and Rome is an unputdownable read for anyone interested in history
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On 14 November 1778, two Syrian Christian priests and two young priesthood aspirants from Kerala stood gazing at the Portuguese cargo ship they were about to board. The ship, Esperanca, was bound for Lisbon from the port of Chennapatana, today’s Chennai. They had reached Chennapatana after an arduous five-month journey from Athirampuzha, an interior village in Kerala, by country boat, by foot, dhow, and by sedan chair, finally scraping through the Anglo-French war zone in Puducherry. Their final destination was Rome.