Cairo, Egypt, Apr 1, 2019 / 10:29 am (CNA).- A court in Cairo sentenced Saturday 30 men to between 10 years and life imprisonment. They were charged with planning to bomb a church in Alexandria, an attack which was not carried out.
Egypt has seen a number of attacks on churches in recent years, motivated in part by a call from the Islamic State.
Of the 30 men sentenced March 30, only 20 were in court. Ten remain on the run. Prosecutors said they had been trained abroad and were influenced by Islamic State.
They were also accused of joining an illegal group, possessing explosives, and planning to attack a liquor store, Reuters reported.
In February 2017 the Islamic State issued a call to target Egypt's Christians.
At least seven Coptic Orthodox people were killed, and 12 injured, in a November 2018 attack on a bus travelling to St. Samuel the Confessor monastery in Minya governorate. Another attack on a group of pilgrims to the monastery in May 2017 had killed 29.
In December 2017, 11 people were killed in an attack on a church in Helwan, in Minya governorate.
Attacks on churches committed on Palm Sunday of 2017 killed 45 and injured more than 125.
St. Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral was bombed in December 2016, killing 29.
About 10 percent of Egypt’s population are Christian, the vast majority of whom are Coptic Orthodox.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
A screen grab from a video shared with ACI Africa that shows the parish house at St. Raphael Fadan Kamantan Catholic Church of the Diocese of Kafanchan in flames Sept. 7, 2023. / Credit: ACI Africa
ACI Africa, Oct 5, 2023 / 10:45 am (CNA).
Secu… […]
Michael Wolffsohn. / Credit: Raimond Spekking/CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
CNA Newsroom, Feb 13, 2024 / 11:45 am (CNA).
Following the spitting attack on a Benedictine abbot on Feb. 3 in Jerusalem, a Jewish historian has decried such inci… […]
The logo of ACI MENA, EWTN’s new Arabic-language news agency, based in Erbil, Iraq. / EWTN
Irondale, Ala., Mar 25, 2022 / 07:28 am (CNA).
EWTN Global Catholic Network has launched an Arabic-language news service headquartered in Erbil, Iraq, Michael P. Warsaw, EWTN’s chairman and CEO, announced March 25, on the Solemnity of the Annunciation.
The Association for Catholic Information Middle East and North Africa, or ACI MENA, will publish original news content in Arabic using a network of correspondents across the region. The news agency will operate from the campus of Erbil’s Catholic University (CUE.) A ceremony marking the occasion was held in Erbil, which included Archbishop Bashar Warda of the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil.
“I am pleased to announce that EWTN has begun a service reporting news from the embattled and underserved Christian communities in the Middle East,” Warsaw said.
“This is an important milestone in the growth of EWTN News around the globe, and I am pleased that we are taking this significant step to better serve our courageous brothers and sisters in the region who have endured so much,” he said.
“Because it is published in Arabic, this agency will also augment the service offered by ACI-Africa, our Nairobi, Kenya-based Catholic news agency, which EWTN launched in 2019 and which publishes content in English, French and Portuguese,” Warsaw added. “ACI MENA will provide a new voice to help spread the Gospel and news of the Church to these Christian communities in their own language.”
Bashar Jameel Hanna, a Chaldean Catholic layman originally from Baghdad, will head EWTN’s newly launched Arabic-language news service, ACI-MENA. The service will provide a new voice to help spread the Gospel and news of the Church to Christian communities in the Middle East and North Africa. EWTN
Hanna studied philosophy and theology for nine years at the Babel College in Iraq and graduated with a degree in civil engineering from the University of Nantes in France. Hanna speaks Arabic, French, English, and Aramaic fluently, and has a significant understanding of classic Arabic.
“When war came around to Iraq, I lost friends and relatives and became a political refugee in Europe,” Hanna said. “Ten years later, I received a call to work on the reconstruction in the Nineveh plains, to rebuild the church of Mosul. Then, late last year, I received a call for the position of Editor-in-Chief with ACI MENA. And I heard the Lord say: ‘I took you from the ends of the earth; from its farthest corners I called you. I said, you are my servant; I have chosen you and have not rejected you’ (Isaiah 41:9.)”
“Becoming ACI MENA’s Editor-in-Chief, to carry the message of love to the Arabic world still submerged in conflicts and persecution, may be a heavy cross … but He has risen!” Hanna added.
Alejandro Bermudez, executive director of the ACI Group, of which ACI MENA is now a part, called the news agency’s launch “a major step forward for the ACI Group as well as for the larger EWTN News family.”
“We are honored to expand our news coverage of the ancient and heroic communities in this region, providing them local, Vatican and world news in Arabic,” Bermudez said. “ACI MENA will not be a simple translation of news in Arabic, but a local news agency written in Arabic for the Arabic-speaking world, which will also bring stories of local Christian communities to the rest of the world.”
ACI MENA is the latest addition to the ACI Group, which includes ACI Prensa, the world’s largest Spanish-language Catholic news organization with headquarters in Lima, Peru; ACI Digital, the São Paulo, Brazil-based news organization, which serves the Portuguese-speaking world; ACI Stampa, the Italian-language news organization based in Rome; and ACI Africa, which covers news from the African continent in English, French, and Portuguese.
ACI Group is part of the larger EWTN News, Inc. division, which also includes Catholic News Agency (CNA), the German-language news service CNA Deutsch, and several other Catholic news outlets, including the National Catholic Register, “EWTN News Nightly,” “EWTN News In Depth,” and several other television news programs.
In its 41st year, EWTN is the largest religious media network in the world. EWTN’s 11 global TV channels are broadcast in multiple languages 24 hours a day, seven days a week to over 390 million television households in more than 150 countries and territories.
EWTN platforms also include radio services transmitted through SIRIUS/XM, iHeart Radio, and over 500 domestic and international AM and FM radio affiliates; a worldwide shortwave radio service; one of the largest Catholic websites in the U.S.; and EWTN News; as well as EWTN Publishing, its book publishing division.
Leave a Reply