Catholic priest stabbed in Bangladesh.
Christians are becoming refugees in huge numbers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11546441/Christians-driven-from-the-ruins-of-Nineveh.html
from the article...
It’s the people that one feels sorry for. A generation ago, there were more than a million Christians living in Iraq, a country of 35 million. A year ago there were 400,000. About two thirds are Chaldean Catholic. Tens of thousands took refuge in the city of Erbil, which is under Kurdish protection.
Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, has just visited Erbil. He found hundreds of families living in mobile containers. Archbishop Bashar Warda, the Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil, had turned over his cathedral and land to help them. Cardinal Nichols spoke of “hugely impressive” efforts among the refugees to find work and continue education. “It is mostly down to the efforts of the Catholic churches,” he reported, “both here and abroad.”
Speaking of the refugee centres he said: “To begin with, food was provided communally. Now each family cooks for itself. Now families are expected to pay towards their rent, if at all possible.” He saw this as a way of keeping families together, with a sense of self-worth and responsibility. He said: “These families want to go home. They want to go back to their houses and land.”
The Cardinal told the press on Tuesday that a Christian presence in Iraq is essential “not out of a nostalgic sense that this community is 2,000 years old, but as part of building a stable, balanced society in that region.”
People in Britain, I think, can feel helpless at distant suffering on television news. But there is a point in organising aid and showing the Government that the Christians of Syria and Iraq are not forgotten. At the Holy Name church in Manchester, for example, an all-night vigil begins this evening at eight.
Christians say in the Creed each week that they believe in the “Communion of saints”. The belief is that prayer and (if it comes to that) martyrdom benefit all members of the Church. So what happens in Syria and Iraq is of immediate consequence
And here? Why doesn't Cardinal Dolan go visit the areas Cardinal Nichols just did?