(Aljazeera) - Two Syrian bishops who were reportedly kidnapped carrying out humanitarian work in the northern province of Aleppo have been released, according to a Christian association.
SANA news agency said the Syriac Orthodox and Greek Orthodox Archbishops of Aleppo, Yohanna Ibrahim and Paul Yazigi, were seized on Monday in the village of Kfar Dael.
A Syriac member of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, Abdulahad Steifo, said the men had been kidnapped on the road to Aleppo from the rebel-held Bab al Hawa crossing with Turkey.
Al Jazeera's Rula Amin, reporting from Beirut, said the kidnapping "has sent a lot of concern to the Christian community in Aleppo and throughout Syria".
"They are afraid of the rising power among Islamist groups; many [Christians] have left the country as battles raged in the last six months. This is just another sign of a deteriorating situation for them."
Several prominent Muslim clerics have been killed in Syria's uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, but the two bishops are the most senior church leaders caught up in the conflict.
Christians make up less than ten per cent of the country's 23 million people and, like other religious minorities, many have been wary of the mainly Sunni Muslim uprising against Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of the Shia sect.
Fears for their future if the rebels were to end 40 years of Assad dynastic rule, which ensured religious freedom without political rights, have increased with the growing strength of rebels and a pledge of allegiance to al-Qaeda by the hardline Nusra Front rebels two weeks ago.
Steifo said Ibrahim had gone to collect Yazigi from the rebel-held Bab al-Hawa crossing because he had crossed there several times before and was familiar with the route.
The two men were driving to Aleppo when they were kidnapped, he added.
Asked who was behind their abduction, Steifo said: "All probabilities are open."
Last September, Ibrahim said that hundreds of Christian families had fled Aleppo as rebels and soldiers battled for control of the country's biggest city.
"In its modern history Aleppo has not seen such critical and painful times ... Christians have been attacked and kidnapped in monstrous ways and their relatives have paid big sums for their release," he told Reuters.
In the central city of Homs, which saw the heaviest bloodshed earlier this year, he said several churches and Christian centres had been damaged in the fighting.
"Until a few months ago the idea of escaping had not crossed the minds of the Christians, but after the danger worsened it has become the main topic of conversation."
Belgrade (Radio Free Europe) - The Serbian Orthodox Church has approved the resignation of a powerful cleric amid sex-scandal claims that culminated this week with the publication of a graphic video appearing to show him engaged in sexual activity with young men.
Bishop posing with Belgrade stripper Dejan Nestorovic
Vasilije Kacavenda, the bishop of Tuzla and Zvornik in Bosnia-Herzegovina, retreated from his clerical duties months ago as allegations mounted that he had used his position for years to stage frequent orgies and rape underage boys and girls.
But the April 22 decision by the Holy Synod to accept his resignation appears to be the first acknowledgment of the church’s growing unease with the crush of lurid accusations that seem better suited to Caligula’s court than an Orthodox diocese.
Bojan Jovanovic, a former theological student in Bijeljina, the seat of Kacavenda’s diocese, says he observed numerous orgies organized by the 74-year-old bishop and attended by fellow clerics and prominent businessmen.
Jovanovic says Kacavenda personally appealed to him to supply young children for sexual purposes and frequently called on high-ranking church officials to organize trysts with young theological students.
"They tried on many occasions to put me in a compromising situation myself or to pull me into their circle," Jovanovic says. "[The bishop] also suggested that I should use the school where I was teaching science to bring him children up to the age of 10, but of course I refused. I was also a witness when abbots from other monasteries would bring theology students who would spend the night with the bishop.
"One morning, one of them called me and asked me to unlock the bishop's room so he could get his things. I said, 'What are your things doing in the bishop's room?' He said, 'Come on, it's not like you don't know. Don't pretend to be stupid.'"
Silent Obedience
Such anecdotal claims had swirled for years around Kacavenda, who had already drawn public ire for his lavish, gilt-edged lifestyle and notorious wartime ties to Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and military chief Ratko Mladic.
Several people had already stepped forward with accusations against the bishop, including a Bosnian Muslim girl who said Kacavenda had forced her to convert to Christianity and then raped her when she was 16.
In 2010, rumors thickened when a photograph emerged showing the bishop posing informally next to a well-known Belgrade stripper, Dejan Nestorovic, who admitted to having a personal relationship with Kacavenda.
But a culture of silent obedience within the church kept hard evidence in short supply, until the Serbian daily “Blic” reported that it had seen pornographic videos that appeared to show Kacavenda engaged in oral sex and other sexual activities with young men in various locations. (Brief, R-rated clips from the video have since been published online by a variety of news sites.)
Kacavenda, now defrocked, may face numerous charges in court. Dusko Tomic, a lawyer in Bijeljina, says he has collected evidence from numerous people claiming to have been sexually abused by the bishop.
These include two priests, as well as the mother and grandparents of Milic Blazanovic, a theology student who as a 16-year-old reportedly rebuffed advances from Kacavenda and later died under mysterious circumstances in an isolated monastery.
'In Big Trouble'
Tomic, reacting to the April 22 ruling, says the decision should send a warning to Kacavenda and other members of the church and government elite that no one is beyond reproach.
“When I read all the information and all the reports from different people that he abused, from people to whom he did much harm, I’m shocked as an Orthodox believer and as a human being that this kind of person is still present in public life," Tomic says. "Kacavenda became a politician. And let’s not forget that he is a general of the Serbian Army. Let’s not forget that he’s a close friend of [Serb Republic President Milorad] Dodik and a lot of influential businessmen and entrepreneurs. All of them are in big trouble now.”
Kacavenda has denied any wrongdoing and on April 22 threatened to sue those who had “smeared and slandered him.” The church, in accepting his resignation, avoided any mention of the scandal, saying only the bishop was stepping down for health reasons.
But his apparent fall from grace is likely to embolden critics of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which has already stifled a series of sex-abuse charges leveled at a second cleric, Bishop Pahomije, who was accused of sexually abusing four minors between 1999 and 2002.
The Belgrade-based church has maintained strict silence on all allegations of sexual misconduct, even as its patriarch, Iriniej, has vocally opposed plans for a gay-pride march in Belgrade, saying such an event would cast a “moral shadow” over his country.
The church’s stance has drawn unfortunate comparisons with the Vatican’s handling of its own sex-abuse scandals. Mirko Djordjevic, a sociologist in Belgrade, says the Orthodox leadership has long thought of itself as untouchable even as rampant evidence of wrongdoing came to light.
"Our church tried to push these things under the carpet. Or, once things could no longer be hidden, the civil courts have waited for the statute of limitations to kick in," Djordevic says. "In the case of Bishop Pahomije, the state is simply waiting for the whole thing to get old, even though the phenomenon of pedophilia in the church and in society is widespread. The trouble is that in our country, except for some notable exceptions, the public is asleep or intimidated and doesn’t have the courage to face these problems.”
Bishop Grigorije of Zahumlje and Herzegovina, a member of the five-member Holy Synod, urges caution in rushing to judgment, saying a church investigation into the matter “cannot take place quickly.”
“My suggestion to believers is not to judge anyone until the truth has come out," Grigorije says. "When we learn what the truth is, then according to our faith – and this is the paradox of our religion – we shouldn’t hate a man but love him and pray for him. But the court will do its job."
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| Syrian Bishop Boulos Yazigi, head of the Greek Orthodox church in Aleppo, who was kidnapped together with Bishop Yuhanna Ibrahim, head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Aleppo. |
(OCA) - In a portion of a letter dated April 22, 2013 and signed by His Grace, Bishop Basil, Secretary of the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America to all member hierarchs, prayers were requested for two Syrian hierarchs who had been abducted earlier that day.
Metropolitan Paul Yazigi
The text of the letter reads as follows.
“Metropolitan Paul Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Aleppo (brother of His Beatitude Patriarch John X of the Great City-of-God Antioch and all the East), and Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim of the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of Aleppo, were both abducted this morning, Monday, April 22nd, while they were traveling together on the road between Antioch (Antakya, Turkey) and the north Syrian city of Aleppo. The driver of the vehicle in which they were traveling was killed in the attack. Your prayers are requested.”
BEIRUT (Daily Star) - Two Aleppian bishops were kidnapped by Syrian rebels in the outskirts of the city Monday evening, Lebanon’s National News Agency reported.
Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim
The driver of Boulos al-Yazigi, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Aleppo and Iskandaroun and Yuhanna Ibrahim, the Syrian-Orthodox Metropolitan of Aleppo, was killed during the attack.
The NNA reported that Ibrahim, Yazigi and the third man, also a priest, were driving from a village near the Turkish border to Aleppo. As they approached the city, they were met with an armed group that forced them out of the car.
The bishops are believed to alive and efforts are ongoing to secure their release.
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Cedar Grove, NJ (SCOOCH) – This Thursday, April 11, the Standing Conference of Oriental Orthodox Churches in America welcomed its newest member jurisdiction, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Archdiocese of North America.
H.E. Archbishop Khajag Barsamian (Armenian), H.E. Archbishop Mor Cyril Aphrem Karim (Syriac), H.E. Archbishop Vicken Aykazian (Armenian), H.E. Mor Titus Yeldho (Malankara-Syriac), and representatives of H.G. Bishop David (Coptic) and H.E. Abune Zekarias (Ethiopian) were on hand at the Coptic Center in Cedar Grove, NJ to welcome an Eritrean Orthodox delegation consisting of H.G. Abune Makarios, Fr. Ghebre-Michael Yohannes, Fr. Athanasius Ghebre-Ab, and Ato Belai Teferi into the organization.
In addition to this historic event, the members of the Standing Conference also discussed the launch of the organization’s official website (scooch.org), the charitable endeavors of the organization, future concelebrations of the liturgy, inter-church relations with external ecclesiastical bodies and an impending youth conference scheduled for June of 2013.
With the inclusion of an official Eritrean Orthodox delegation, the Standing Conference now counts within its ranks representatives of every canonical Oriental Orthodox Church in the world.
(YouTube) - Students from Hellenic College Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology sing at the informal memorial set up for victims of the Boston Marathon at Boylston Street.
