Note: Earlier today the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer (F.S.S.R.) (Transalpine Redemptorists) posted on their blog an urgent appeal of Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Baghdad, concerning the plight of Christians living in and around the Iraqi city of Mosul. On their Facebook page, the F.S.S.R. expressed regret that this letter has not been widely disseminated online. In an effort to bring more attention to it, I am copying the full text below. Please share.
The news isn’t new, but since so few Catholic and Orthodox web-logs are mentioning it, I thought I might take a few moments to remind readers that Russia is continuing to persecute both Christians and non-Christians in the recently annexed Crimea. It appears that both the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) and Orthodox Christians loyal to the Kievan Patriarch (as opposed to the Moscow Patriarch (MP)) are high on the target list. More details on what is going on over there are available from Eurasia Review.
It didn’t receive as much play in the blogosphere as I expected, but George Weigel’s “An Open Letter to the Patriarch of Moscow,” housed over at First Things, is still worth reading. It is worth reading not because Weigel’s neoconservative political posture isn’t nauseating, but because it should remind certain Catholics who have doe eyes for “neo-Holy Russia,” i.e., the apparent resurgence of symphonia between the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the government of Vladimir Putin, that, at this juncture at least, support for Russia and her church is a betrayal of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).
