Muslim Brotherhood on rampage, govt. to use deadly force

(Fox News) - Attacks on Coptic Christian churches in Egypt continued for a second day Thursday, the country’s state-run news agency said, as Muslim Brotherhood supporters torched a church in a province outside of Cairo.

Egypt's MENA agency said supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi set fire to the Prince Tadros church in the province of Fayoum, where three similar attacks occurred on other churches the day before.

Ishaq Ibrahim from The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights group, documented as many as 39 incidents of violence against churches, monasteries, Coptic schools and shops in different parts of the country on Wednesday. Violence across Egypt in the past two days has left at least 638 dead and 4,200 injured, according to Health Ministry figures.

Looking to crack down on church-related attacks, Egyptian authorities on Thursday referred 84 people in Suez, some Muslim Brotherhood protesters, to military prosecutors on charges of murder and burning churches, the MENA news agency said, Reuters reports.

The attacks drew a sharp rebuke from State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who said they “risk further aggravating an already fragile atmosphere.”

“We are outraged and deplore in the strongest terms the reprehensible attacks of the past few days against numerous Coptic Christian churches,” Psaki said during a Thursday briefing. “There can be absolutely no place for such violence in Egypt, and we call on all of Egypt's leaders to condemn such attacks.”

“The government has a responsibility to create an atmosphere where Egyptians can exercise their universal rights, including free assembly, expression, and media,” she added.

And also...

(Fox News) - Egypt's government has vowed to strengthen its crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood protesters, with the Interior Ministry saying on state television Thursday that security forces will use live ammunition to counter attacks against themselves or state buildings, hours after demonstrators torched two government facilities in Giza.

The Muslim Brotherhood, remaining defiant, said earlier in the day that it would not back down in the wake of Wednesday's violence that left more than 500 dead, calling for supporters to "bring down this military coup."

State television footage showed firefighters evacuating employees from the larger of the two offices in Giza, Cairo's twin city on the west bank of the Nile River, while it was being attacked. Police arrested several protesters.

Witnesses told Reuters that hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, carrying pictures of former President Mohammed Morsi and of those killed Wednesday, also marched in Alexandria.

"We will push until we bring down this military coup," Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad wrote on Twitter, according to Reuters.

Egypt's government, in a statement, called the demonstrations "terrorist acts" and a "criminal plan to demolish the pillars of the Egyptian state," according to Reuters.

Meanwhile, successive attacks on Coptic Christian churches continued for a second day, according to Egypt's official news agency and human rights advocates.

Egypt's MENA agency said Morsi supporters set fire to the Prince Tadros church in the province of Fayoum, nearly 50 miles southwest of Cairo. The same province witnessed similar attacks on at least three churches in different villages on Wednesday.

El-Haddad said early Thursday that the Muslim Brotherhood would remain "non-violent" in their demonstrations, but later took a different stance, saying that the group has been having a difficult time trying to persuade its members to be peaceful in the wake of Wednesday's bloodshed.

"After the blows and arrests and killings that we are facing emotions are too high to be guided by anyone,'" he told Reuters. "It's not about Morsi anymore. Are we going to accept a new military tyranny in Egypt or not?'"

El-Haddad added that Muslim Brotherhood currently can not account for the whereabouts of several of its leaders, calling it a "very strong blow," to the group.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama told reporters that the U.S. is canceling a joint military exercise with Egypt amid the violence, saying "our traditional operations can not be continued as usual as people are being killed in the streets.”

The U.S. has not declared Morsi's ouster a coup, a move that would require the Obama administration to suspend $1.3 billion in annual military aid.

The death toll in Wednesday's crackdown, which stands at 638, according to the latest Health Ministry figures, made it by far the deadliest day since the 2011 popular uprising that toppled longtime ruler and autocrat Hosni Mubarak. The Health Ministry said Thursday that 4,200 people were wounded.

The casualties were mostly in Cairo, where police in riot gear bulldozed two protest camps that had been the flashpoint of growing unrest following Morsi's July 3 ouster.

Mohammed Fathallah, the ministry spokesman, said that blood-soaked bodies lined up at a mosque-turned-morgue in Nasr City were not included in the official figure. Reuters counted 228 bodies at the mosque.

Inside the building, the names the dead were scribbled on white sheets covering the bodies, some of which were charred, and a list with 265 names was plastered on the wall. Posters of Morsi were piled up on in one corner as the heat made the stench from the corpses almost unbearable.

Many people in the mosque complained that authorities were preventing them from obtaining permits to bury their dead, although the Muslim Brotherhood announced that several funerals had been held for identified victims on Thursday. Fathallah denied the allegations of permits denied.

Cairo, a city of some 18 million people, was uncharacteristically quiet Thursday, with only a fraction of its usually hectic traffic and many stores and government offices shuttered. Many people hunkered down at home for fear of more violence. Banks and the stock market were closed.

Wednesday's violence prompted Interim President Adly Mansour to declare a month-long state of emergency and impose a 7 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew in the city, along with Alexandria, and 12 other provinces, ordering the armed forces to support the police in efforts to restore law and order and protect state facilities.

Backed by helicopters, police on Wednesday fired tear gas and used armored bulldozers to plow into the barricades at the two protest camps on opposite ends of Cairo. Morsi's supporters had been camped out since before he was ousted by a July 3 coup that followed days of mass protests by millions of Egyptians demanding that he step down.

The smaller camp — near Cairo University in Giza — was cleared of protesters relatively quickly, but it took about 12 hours for police to take control of the main sit-in site near the Rabaah al-Adawiya Mosque in Nasr City that has served as the epicenter of the pro-Morsi campaign and had drawn chanting throngs of men, women and children only days earlier.

After the police moved on the camps, street battles broke out in Cairo and other cities across Egypt. Government buildings and police stations were attacked, roads were blocked, Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said.

At one point, protesters trapped a police Humvee on an overpass near the Nasr City camp and pushed it off, according to images posted on social networking sites that showed an injured policeman on the ground below, near a pool of blood and the overturned vehicle.

Three journalists were among the dead: Mick Deane, 61, a cameraman for British broadcaster Sky News; Habiba Ahmed Abd Elaziz, 26, a reporter for the Gulf News, a state-backed newspaper in the United Arab Emirates; and Ahmed Abdel Gawad, who wrote for Egypt's state-run newspaper Al Akhbar. Deane and Elaziz were shot to death, their employers said, while the Egyptian Press Syndicate, a journalists' union, said it had no information on how Gawad was killed.

Interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi said in a televised address to the nation that it was a "difficult day" and that he regretted the bloodshed, but offered no apologies for moving against the protesters, saying they were given ample warnings to leave and he had tried foreign mediation efforts. El-Beblawi added that the government could not indefinitely tolerate a challenge to authority that the 6-week-old protests represented.

"We want to see a civilian state in Egypt, not a military state and not a religious state," he said.

Despite the curfew, sporadic clashes continued in Cairo through the evening.

By early afternoon, dozens of Morsi supporters were blocking a main road near the site of the Nasr City camp, disrupting traffic.

In the city of Assiut, south of Cairo, a police station was hit by two mortar shells Wednesday night fired by suspected Morsi supporters, according to officers there who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

As the fighting intensified Wednesday, Mohamed ElBaradei abruptly resigned as Egypt's interim vice president. In a letter sent to Mansour, ElBaradei cited "decisions I do not agree with" regarding the government's crackdown.

"It has become difficult for me to continue bearing responsibility for decisions that I do not agree with and whose consequences I fear," ElBaradei wrote. "I cannot bear the responsibility for one drop of blood.''

The National Salvation Front, the main opposition group that he headed during Morsi's year in office, said it regretted his departure and complained that it was not consulted in his decision to step down. Tamarod, the youth group behind the mass anti-Morsi protests that preceded the coup, said ElBaradei was dodging his responsibility at a time when his services were needed.

On Thursday, Reuters reported that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had called for the United Nations Security Council to convene quickly to discuss the crisis.

Speaking at a press conference in Turkey's capital, Ankara, Erdogan said "Those who remain silent in the face of this massacre are as guilty as those who carried it out."

Secretary of State John Kerry said the violence in Egypt is deplorable and is a serious blow to reconciliation efforts, and that it runs counter to Egyptians' aspirations for peace.

Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president, had just completed one year in office when he was toppled. He has largely been held incommunicado, but was visited by European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton and an African delegation. Ashton reported that Morsi is well and has access to television and newspapers.

Several bids by the United States, the European Union and Gulf Arab states to reconcile the two sides in Egypt in an inclusive political process have failed, with the Brotherhood insisting that Morsi must first be freed along with several of the group's leaders who have been detained in connection with incitement of violence.

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Assembly of Bishops meeting in September

So far the individual committees have spent their time collecting data. They now know who their priests are and where they serve, which youth groups are active and what they are doing, the legal entities in existence, and how different jurisdictions do things. The next step is to do something with that data. We'll see what Chicago produces.

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(AOB) - The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America will hold its annual meeting September 17-19, 2013 at the Chicago Marriott in Schaumburg, Illinois. This is the fourth Annual Meeting of the Assembly. The agenda, which includes discussion of the Assembly’s vision, proposals for canonical restructuring, and an Assembly-sponsored national youth conference, can be found here. The Assembly requests the prayers of all clergy, monastics, and laity.

The Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops is comprised of all 65 active Orthodox hierarchs serving the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

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Stay abreast of suffering in Egypt - the Coptic Defense League

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Syrian "rebels" destroy church, terrorize Christians in area

(AINA) - The Antiochian Orthodox church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus was a landmark of al-Thawrah (also known as al-Tabqah). It was an impressive, modern structure with a large yard, surrounded by a high wall and well-situated on a main street near the corniche -- a well landscaped area hugging the southern bank of Lake Assad which was popular with locals going on an evening stroll. Its elegant dome, surmounted by a cross, could be seen from all parts of the Third Quarter (also known as Hayy al-Ishtirakiyah), where it was located.

Spiritually, this church was under the jurisdiction of the archdiocese of Aleppo, the metropolitan of which, Boulos al-Yazigi, was kidnapped (and allegedly murdered) on April 22 of this year, along with the Syriac Orthodox metropolitan of the same city, Mor Gregorios Youhanna Ibrahim. It was built between 1985 and 1994, on land offered by the al-Thawrah's city council, and could accommodate up to 300 worshippers. Moreover, not only did this church serve more than 250 Orthodox families, but it was also used by local Christian denominations which did not have their own places of worship, including the small Syriac Orthodox congregation.

This was also one of only two Christian places of worship in the town, the other being the small church of St. George, which belonged to the Assyrian Church of the East. Built around 1973, along with a community hall, this was located in the older part of al-Thawrah, known locally as al-Qaryah (the village). Around 2000, a plot of land in the Third Quarter was purchased by this community in order to build a new church, closer to the three quarters that housed those working in the Euphrates dam -- and where the bulk of the Assyrians lived. Due to lack of funding, however, this project never materialised and, perhaps, for the better.

On February 11, rebel fighters from the Islamist Jihadist "al-Nusra Front" -- designated by the USA, UN, Australia and UK as a terrorist organisation -- took control of the city and its strategic hydroelectric dam, the largest of its kind in the country. They also seized control of the three quarters that housed dam workers and in which, of course, stood the Orthodox Church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, and in which most of the Christians were settled.

Christian eyewitnesses who fled al-Thawrah, now displaced in other parts of Syria, as well as in Lebanon and Turkey, tell of religious discrimination by the rebels, as well as forced confiscation of Christian possessions and properties, with many items being sold on the black market in order to purchase weapons and ammunition. Even the churches weren't spared.

"The 'Free Syrian Army' demolished the [Sts. Sergius and Bacchus] church," lamented one refugee, "They tore up the sanctuary curtains, Bibles and other holy books, and broke all the crosses, chairs and icons of Jesus and the saints. They stole electrical appliances like fans, chandeliers and lights. They took whatever was in the church, and sold it all. There is nothing there now."

There is no hope, however, for the Christians to return and rebuild after the conflict subsides -- that's if it indeed subsides. They were once considered better off than their relatives and friends who still lived in the villages they had migrated from, but are now destitute, having lost everything -- their homes, businesses, and even personal belongings.

"Even though I have left," recounted another Assyrian refugee, "the terrorists still call and text me from there, on my cell phone, to bother me. They recently called and told me: 'If you attempt to return to al-Tabqah we will cut off your head and display it on the mosque so that all the Muslims there can see it and be proud of it.' They say other things too, but what they say is so disturbing, that I keep my phone switched off unless I really need to use it."

Whilst it may be easy to switch off a cell phone, and ignore such threats, it is not so easy to shake off the trauma of dispossession and loss. After spending up to 45 years in a town which became their home, many of these refugees managed to escape with nothing but the clothes on their backs. "We have lost everything," said the head of an Assyrian household displaced from al-Thawrah, "There is nothing for us over there now, nothing to return to. We just need help to get out of here and settle in a country that's safe."

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Muslim Brotherhood sets St. George Church ablaze

(IBTimes) - Supporters of ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi have attacked churches in Dilga, Menya and Sohag after government security forces backed by armoured cars and bulldozers stormed protest camps outside Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque.

Coptic churches were attacked after hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members were feared dead when troops used live bullet rounds and teargas to clear a protest camp in Cairo.

The Churches of Abraham and the Virgin Mary in Menya were burning after Morsi supporters set fire to the outside of the building exteriors and smashed through doors.

Russia Today reported that at least 1,000 pro-Morsi protesters were involved in the attack before police armed with teargas dispersed them.

Muslim Brotherhood members also threw firebombs at Mar Gergiss church in Sohag, a city with a large community of Coptic Christians who represents up to 10 percent of Egypt's 84 million people, causing it to burn down, the official MENA news agency said.

Protesters threw molotov cocktails at the Bon Pasteur Catholic Church and Monastery in Suez, setting it ablaze and breaking windows.

The development came after Gulf News newspaper confirmed that its Egypt correspondent Habiba Abdel Aziz had been killed by sniper fire in Cairo.

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Antiochian priest is received into Assyrian Church of the East

By way of clarification: I was informed by someone in the know about this that no release was given from the Antiochian Archdiocese. He simply informed them of his intent and made the change.

(Assyrian Church) - On the Fourth Sunday of Summer, 28 July 2013, His Grace Mar Awa Royel, Bishop of the Diocese of California, formally and publicly received the Rev’d Qashisha Ephraim Ashur Alkhas into the Assyrian Church of the East for the Diocese of California. The reception by clerical confession of faith, oath of obedience and vesting was given and completed before the witness of the clergy and faithful at Mar Zaia Cathedral in Modesto, California.

​On 14 July, Fr. Ephraim was officially but privately received into the Assyrian Church as a priest of the Diocese of California. He was received from the Diocese of Los Angeles of the North American Archdiocese of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch (الروم الأرثوذكس).

​Fr. Ephraim grew up in Saint Mary’s Assyrian Church of the East in North Hollywood, later Tarzana. Here he was baptized by Qashisha Barkho Oshana. During his teenage years he enjoyed participating in the daily services at St Mary’s. He learned to love the Church and her services through the Very Rev’d Cor-Bishop George Bet-Rasho and Rev. Deacon Dan Daniel, his close lifetime mentor and friend. He was tonsured and ordained a Reader by His Holiness Mar Dinkha IV, Catholicos-Patriarch, at the new St. Mary’s church in Tarzana, California, in the Summer of 2001. After completing high school and receiving his B.A. degree in Spanish Literature, he continued his studies at Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary where he completed his MDiv in 2010. He was ordained to the Holy Priesthood on 28 June 2009, having been a deacon since 2008.

​He and his wife Elaine live in Modesto, with their daughters Shoshanna and Elishwa. Fr. Ephraim will serve the Diocese as an assistant priest and serve full time in the offices of CIRED (Commission on Inter-Church Relations and Education Development), and will be continuing his graduate-level studies at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California.

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Orthodox, Catholic youth at Russian monastery service trip

Moscow (AsiaNews) - A group of Catholic and Orthodox students from various nations is taking part in a summer work camp on the Solovki Islands, one of the most symbolic sites in Russia, a symbol of spirituality, but also of the cruel Soviet gulag system.

The initiative is sponsored by the Moscow Department for Interregional Cooperation and Relations with Religious Organisations, together with the Youth Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, in cooperation with the 'St Andrew the First Called' Fund.

Participants will stay until mid-August at a camping site, living in tents in accordance with the Benedictine rule 'Ora et Labora' (Pray and Work), organisers said.

Some will do small jobs to improve the Solovki Monastery Museum, like stacking firewood for the winter. Others will work at the monastery's publishing house or take part in archaeological digs.

Guided tours to local sites of historical and artistic interest are planned, Pavel Fedosov, a contributor to the 'St Andrew the First Called' Fund, told blagoves-info.ru, a Russian religious website.

It is the first initiative of volunteering to mark the 1025th anniversary of the Baptism of ancient Russia, which took place in solemn form in late July between Moscow, Kiev and Minsk, said Hieromonk Dimitri (Pershin), from the Commission of the Diocesan Missionary Council in Moscow.

The priest said he hoped the young people, who left on 28 July, will "find an inner beauty," as they work to restore the outer beauty of the spiritual and cultural legacy of the infamous White Sea archipelago.

As the monk noted, Catholic youth from Ukraine, Italy and Poland are also involved in the project, "young people who wish to learn more about Orthodox traditions, the history of the monastery and that of the Solovki prison where people of many nationalities and denominations were locked up, including a Latvian Catholic bishop, Mgr Boleslaw Sloska".

Meanwhile, the city of Moscow hopes that in the future the project will find new donors, and enable more young people to share such an experience.

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