Giuseppe Lazzarotto, apostolic nuncio in the Holy Land, Patriarch of Jerusalem Fouad Boutros Twal and Patriarch emeritus Michel Sabbah pleaded for peace in the Holy Land.

Lazzarotto said the loss of life in Gaza is “not acceptable”, adding that “stakeholders should be brought to the negotiating table”.

Sabbah described the Israeli incursion a ‘murder’. He denounced the military offensive in Gaza. He said it “will not advance Israel one step toward peace and security”.

Twal argued that for the last few decades war did not solve Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. He said that unless the Israelis end their occupation of Palestinian lands there can be no peace. He said the leaders of Israel “believe only in military force”.

LGBTIQ executive order ‘extreme’

Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore and Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo, who attended the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ ad hoc Committee for Religious Liberty and Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, said President Barack Obama’s executive order aimed at preventing discrimination against the LGBTIQ community “is unprecedented and extreme and should be opposed. In the name of forbidding discrimination, this order implements discrimination,” said the bishops.

“With the stroke of a pen, it lends the economic power of the federal government to a deeply flawed understanding of human sexuality,” they continued.

“The order prohibits ‘gender identity’ discrimination, a prohibition that… is predicated on the false idea that ‘gender’ is a social construct or psychological reality that can be chosen at variance from one’s biological sex. This will jeopardise the privacy and rights of federal contractor employees and federal employees. For example, a biological male employee may be allowed to use the women’s restroom or locker room because the male employee identifies as a female.”

‘Even Genghis Khan did not do this’

The small number of Christians who had remained in the city of Mosul have now left the city after an ultimatum from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) to leave Mosul, convert to Islam, or be killed.

Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako, head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, said “the heinous crime of the Islamic state was carried out not just against Christians, but against humanity”. He reported that Islamists were marking the homes of Christians in Mosul with the Arabic letter ‘N’, standing for ‘Nazarene’.

“How in the 21st century could people be forced from their houses just because they are Christian, or Shi’ite or Sunni or Yazidi?” he said. “Christian families have been expelled from their houses and their valuables were stolen… their houses and property expropriated in the name of the Islamic State.”

“Even Genghis Khan or Hulagu [his grandson] didn’t do this,” the patriarch added.

Shi’ite Muslim homes were also being marked, with ‘R’ for ‘Rejecter’, and Shi’ites were fleeing the city.

Christians have a duty to defend their nation

“We never fought wars of conquest, and now do not attack other people, but we have a sacred duty to defend our country,” said Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, according to a report from the Religious Information Service of Ukraine. He said there are occasions when aggressors can only be stopped by the use of force. He described this as a tragedy.

He also added that the Christian “has a right to defend his land. I cannot speak about the right to kill, but a right to protection”.

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)