Latest news with #BartholomewI
Euronews
3 days ago
- Politics
- Euronews
Ukraine says it has hit more than 40 Russian strategic bombers
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I led a liturgy in Istanbul on Sunday, marking the 1,700th anniversary of Christianity's first ecumenical council. The first Council of Nicaea (located in modern-day Turkey, in the ciy of İznik) took place in 325 AD and the date remains important to Orthodox-Catholic relations. It saw Roman Emperor Constantine I bring together some 300 bishops, according to the Catholic Almanac. Among the outcomes was the Nicene Creed, a profession of faith that is still recited by Christians today and required of those undertaking important functions within the Orthodox, as well as the Catholic and Lutheran Churches. As Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I is "primus inter pares" (first among equals) among the patriarchs of the Eastern Orthodox Church and is its spiritual leader. Bartholomew, who is known for his ecumenical as well as humanitarian and ecological efforts, had met with Pope Leo XIV earlier this week for the first time. An operation by Ukraine's Security Service on Sunday hit 41 strategic bombers that were lined up at four airfields inside Russia. An official with the security service (SBU) said: 'enemy strategic bombers are burning en masse in Russia', adding that Ukraine is conducting 'a large scale special operation aimed at destroying enemy bomber aircraft.' The operation, dubbed "Spiderweb" (Pavutyna), targeted four airfields: Dyagilevo in Riazan region, Ivanovo in Ivanovo region, Belaya air base in Russia's Irkutsk region, which is located in south-eastern Siberia over 4,000km east of the frontline, and Olenya air base in Russia's Murmansk region, around 2,000km away from Ukraine's border. The operation included the clandestine smuggling of drones deep into Russian territory, hiding them and finally launching them remotely. In March, Ukraine announced it had developed a new type of drone that can reach a range of up to 3,000 kilometres, but gave no details about its type or the size of its warhead. Recent satellite images show various Russian strategic bombers at the four bases that were allegedly hit during the operation, including Tu-95, Tu-22M3, Tu-160 and A-50. Tu-95, Tu-22 and Tu-160 are Russian heavy bombers regularly used by Moscow to launch missiles at Ukraine. The Tu-22M3 is capable of carrying Kh-22 and Kh-32 cruise missiles, travelling at a speed of 4,000 km/h, exceeding Mach 4. Tu-95 - the oldest among them - it is a Soviet-era plane, originally used to carry nuclear bombs but since modified to launch cruise missiles. A-50 is radar detection aircraft, which can detect air defense systems, guided missiles, and coordinate targets for Russian fighter jets. Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier said he was meeting with the Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs, as well as the General Staff and SBU. "We are doing everything to protect our independence, our state, and our people," Zelenskyy said, adding that would be outlining "tasks for the near term" and "define our positions ahead of the meeting in Istanbul on Monday." Ukrainian and Russian officials are schedule to meet in Istanbul on Monday 2 June for the second round of talks between the two sides. Zelenskyy said Kyiv's utmost priority is unconditional ceasefire, followed by the release of prisoners and the return of Ukrainian children that were forcefully deported by Russia. Violence has struck again on the Costa del Sol. Two men died on Saturday night in the seaside town of Fuengirola, a popular tourist destination, after being shot by several hooded individuals who got out of a vehicle and opened fire on a group of people in a beachfront bar. The incident took place near number 106 of the Rey de España promenade, close to the Martín Playa beach bar. Police sources suggest that the attack could be related to a possible settling of scores linked to drug trafficking, although other lines of investigation have not been ruled out, according to local newspaper 'Málaga Hoy'. This new episode adds to a worrying string of violent incidents on the Costa del Sol so far this year. Although the authorities have pointed out that there is no direct connection between the incidents, the frequency of shootings and murders in the area has caused alarm among locals and visitors alike. In early May, three men were arrested following the sixth shooting in Malaga in just three weeks. Just a few days later, another shooting occurred in the province, bringing the total to seven shootings in just 45 days.
Euronews
3 days ago
- General
- Euronews
Patriarch Bartholomew I marks 1,700th anniversary of Council of Nicaea
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I led a liturgy in Istanbul on Sunday, marking the 1,700th anniversary of Christianity's first ecumenical council. The first Council of Nicaea (located in modern-day Turkey, in the ciy of İznik) took place in 325 AD and the date remains important to Orthodox-Catholic relations. It saw Roman Emperor Constantine I bring together some 300 bishops, according to the Catholic Almanac. Among the outcomes was the Nicene Creed, a profession of faith that is still recited by Christians today and required of those undertaking important functions within the Orthodox, as well as the Catholic and Lutheran Churches. As Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I is "primus inter pares" (first among equals) among the patriarchs of the Eastern Orthodox Church and is its spiritual leader. Bartholomew, who is known for his ecumenical as well as humanitarian and ecological efforts, had met with Pope Leo XIV earlier this week for the first time.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Who wept for these people?' Francis's papacy was defined by compassion for refugees
On a glorious spring day almost a decade ago, an Airbus A320 took off from Mytilene airport on the Greek island of Lesbos. For what seemed like an age, a small group of bystanders, including officials and the media, watched in disbelief until the plane veered left over the sun-speckled Aegean Sea and its Alitalia livery could no longer be discerned. On board was Pope Francis, who had spent barely five hours on Lesbos, then at the centre of the refugee crisis on Europe's eastern fringes. The whirlwind tour had been replete with symbolism but it was the pontiff's fellow travellers who had caused such surprise. Moments after the head of the Roman Catholic Church had entered the aircraft, 12 refugees had also appeared, cheerfully making their way across the runway with expressions of stunned relief, their first taste of freedom after incarceration in the island's notorious 'reception' centre. 'The pope has desired to make a gesture of welcome regarding refugees, accompanying on his plane to Rome three families from Syria, 12 people in all, including six children,' said a spokesperson from the Holy See. 'Two families come from Damascus, and one from Deir ez-Zor. Their homes had been bombed. The Vatican will take responsibility for bringing in and maintaining [them].' It was 16 April 2016. Francis had assumed the papacy three years, one month and four days earlier. By the time of his visit to the Greek outpost more than 1 million people had traversed Lesbos on their way to Europe, mostly from Syria but also from other parts of Asia and Africa. The island had become synonymous with the biggest mass movement of men, women and children since the second world war; its rocky shores and sandy beaches covered with hundreds of thousands of lifejackets and broken rubber boats – the detritus of survival and death. Local officials had lost count of those who had perished in its waters. 'Before they are numbers, refugees are first and foremost human beings,' the pope told assembled dignitaries, who included the ecumenical patriarch, Bartholomew I, the leader of the world's Orthodox faithful, before throwing a wreath into the sea to commemorate those who had lost their lives to it. The oldest child of Italians who migrated to Argentina, the former Jesuit priest had, from the start, made the defence of refugees a cornerstone of his papacy, ensuring in July 2013 that his first pastoral trip outside Rome was to the remote island of Lampedusa. The tiny rocky strip had emerged as a magnet for smuggling rings bringing people across the Mediterranean from north Africa. In what would be described as a spur-of-the-moment decision, Francis elected to visit the island in the wake of migrant deaths in a fatal crossing. Residents who cried 'viva il Papa' as he was whisked round in an open-topped Fiat voiced incredulity that the Catholic leader would choose to travel to the farthest reaches of Italy for an official tour dedicated solely to migrants and refugees. But the pilgrimage had a goal. For Francis it amounted to the symbolic embrace of something much wider; the beginning of a pontificate that deliberately sought to minister to the marginalised and poor. In Lampedusa – as in Lesbos three years later – the pope was as determined to express compassion for the living as for those who had died embarking on perilous journeys. 'Who wept for these people who were aboard the boat?' he asked during an open-air mass after tossing a wreath into the sea in their memory. 'For the young mothers who brought their babies? For these men who wanted to support their families? We are a society that has forgotten how to cry.' Later he would confide that the tragedy in Lampedusa had 'made me feel the duty to travel' in an effort to not only highlight the plight of refugees but 'encourage the seeds of hope that are there'. It was a theme that the progressive reformer would revisit when, as the first pontiff to address the US Congress in 2015, he invoked his family's own immigrant background as he appealed to lawmakers to embrace, rather than fear, refugees. Europe, he repeatedly said, had a moral obligation to support the countries from which migrants hailed. In December 2021 Francis again travelled to the fringes of the continent on a five-day tour that took in Cyprus and Greece. Despite the 'small flocks' of Catholics in both countries, he felt another trip was needed not only to allow him 'to drink from the ancient wellsprings of Europe' but to focus on those landing on their shores. Before he flew to Cyprus he had promised to relocate 50 vulnerable asylum seekers to Italy. But five years after stunning Europe's political elite by flying back to Rome from Lesbos with 12 refugees, it was clear that migration policies, globally, had hardened with governments resorting to increasingly violent methods, including pushbacks, to keep arrivals at bay. While migration remained 'a humanitarian crisis that concerns everyone', the Mediterranean, Francis lamented, had become a 'desolate sea of death', because Europe had failed to heed the lessons from history. Related: 'He felt our pain': Catholic church in Gaza grieves Pope Francis's death 'Please let us stop this shipwreck of civilisation,' he pleaded in an address before the Greek president during a second lightning trip to Lesbos. 'I ask every man and woman, all of us, to overcome the paralysis of fear, the indifference that kills, the cynical disregard that nonchalantly condemns to death those on the fringes.' In Cyprus he went further, condemning the 'slavery' and 'torture' often suffered by refugees. 'It reminds us of the history of the last century of the Nazis, of Stalin,' he said as startled local officials looked on during a prayer service held for immigrants in Nicosia, the island's war-split capital. 'And we wonder how this could have happened.' In the face of such 'cruelty', Francis allowed his language to become more forceful. In 2024 he dubbed the 'systematic work' of governments to deter migrants a 'grave sin.' Earlier this year he rebuked the Trump administration for its migrant crackdown, saying its mass deportation plans amounted to a major crisis that would 'damage the dignity of many men and women'. In an extraordinary step, he berated the vice-president, JD Vance, a Catholic convert – who he would go on to meet on Easter Sunday hours before his death - for his theological defence of deportations. On the peripheries of Europe, the migrant crisis may have somewhat waned, but in Lesbos and other places where people continue to arrive, albeit in smaller numbers, locals and newcomers are now bonded by the knowledge that with Francis' passing they have lost one of their greatest champions yet.
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Who wept for these people?' Francis's papacy was defined by compassion for refugees
On a glorious spring day almost a decade ago, an Airbus A320 took off from Mytilene airport on the Greek island of Lesbos. For what seemed like an age, a small group of bystanders, including officials and the media, watched in disbelief until the plane veered left over the sun-speckled Aegean Sea and its Alitalia livery could no longer be discerned. On board was Pope Francis, who had spent barely five hours on Lesbos, then at the centre of the refugee crisis on Europe's eastern fringes. The whirlwind tour had been replete with symbolism but it was the pontiff's fellow travellers who had caused such surprise. Moments after the head of the Roman Catholic Church had entered the aircraft, 12 refugees had also appeared, cheerfully making their way across the runway with expressions of stunned relief, their first taste of freedom after incarceration in the island's notorious 'reception' centre. 'The pope has desired to make a gesture of welcome regarding refugees, accompanying on his plane to Rome three families from Syria, 12 people in all, including six children,' said a spokesperson from the Holy See. 'Two families come from Damascus, and one from Deir ez-Zor. Their homes had been bombed. The Vatican will take responsibility for bringing in and maintaining [them].' It was 16 April 2016. Francis had assumed the papacy three years, one month and four days earlier. By the time of his visit to the Greek outpost more than 1 million people had traversed Lesbos on their way to Europe, mostly from Syria but also from other parts of Asia and Africa. The island had become synonymous with the biggest mass movement of men, women and children since the second world war; its rocky shores and sandy beaches covered with hundreds of thousands of lifejackets and broken rubber boats – the detritus of survival and death. Local officials had lost count of those who had perished in its waters. 'Before they are numbers, refugees are first and foremost human beings,' the pope told assembled dignitaries, who included the ecumenical patriarch, Bartholomew I, the leader of the world's Orthodox faithful, before throwing a wreath into the sea to commemorate those who had lost their lives to it. The oldest child of Italians who migrated to Argentina, the former Jesuit priest had, from the start, made the defence of refugees a cornerstone of his papacy, ensuring in July 2013 that his first pastoral trip outside Rome was to the remote island of Lampedusa. The tiny rocky strip had emerged as a magnet for smuggling rings bringing people across the Mediterranean from north Africa. In what would be described as a spur-of-the-moment decision, Francis elected to visit the island in the wake of migrant deaths in a fatal crossing. Residents who cried 'viva il Papa' as he was whisked round in an open-topped Fiat voiced incredulity that the Catholic leader would choose to travel to the farthest reaches of Italy for an official tour dedicated solely to migrants and refugees. But the pilgrimage had a goal. For Francis it amounted to the symbolic embrace of something much wider; the beginning of a pontificate that deliberately sought to minister to the marginalised and poor. In Lampedusa – as in Lesbos three years later – the pope was as determined to express compassion for the living as for those who had died embarking on perilous journeys. 'Who wept for these people who were aboard the boat?' he asked during an open-air mass after tossing a wreath into the sea in their memory. 'For the young mothers who brought their babies? For these men who wanted to support their families? We are a society that has forgotten how to cry.' Later he would confide that the tragedy in Lampedusa had 'made me feel the duty to travel' in an effort to not only highlight the plight of refugees but 'encourage the seeds of hope that are there'. It was a theme that the progressive reformer would revisit when, as the first pontiff to address the US Congress in 2015, he invoked his family's own immigrant background as he appealed to lawmakers to embrace, rather than fear, refugees. Europe, he repeatedly said, had a moral obligation to support the countries from which migrants hailed. In December 2021 Francis again travelled to the fringes of the continent on a five-day tour that took in Cyprus and Greece. Despite the 'small flocks' of Catholics in both countries, he felt another trip was needed not only to allow him 'to drink from the ancient wellsprings of Europe' but to focus on those landing on their shores. Before he flew to Cyprus he had promised to relocate 50 vulnerable asylum seekers to Italy. But five years after stunning Europe's political elite by flying back to Rome from Lesbos with 12 refugees, it was clear that migration policies, globally, had hardened with governments resorting to increasingly violent methods, including pushbacks, to keep arrivals at bay. While migration remained 'a humanitarian crisis that concerns everyone', the Mediterranean, Francis lamented, had become a 'desolate sea of death', because Europe had failed to heed the lessons from history. 'Please let us stop this shipwreck of civilisation,' he pleaded in an address before the Greek president during a second lightning trip to Lesbos. 'I ask every man and woman, all of us, to overcome the paralysis of fear, the indifference that kills, the cynical disregard that nonchalantly condemns to death those on the fringes.' In Cyprus he went further, condemning the 'slavery' and 'torture' often suffered by refugees. 'It reminds us of the history of the last century of the Nazis, of Stalin,' he said as startled local officials looked on during a prayer service held for immigrants in Nicosia, the island's war-split capital. 'And we wonder how this could have happened.' In the face of such 'cruelty', Francis allowed his language to become more forceful. In 2024 he dubbed the 'systematic work' of governments to deter migrants a 'grave sin.' Earlier this year he rebuked the Trump administration for its migrant crackdown, saying its mass deportation plans amounted to a major crisis that would 'damage the dignity of many men and women'. In an extraordinary step, he berated the vice-president, JD Vance, a Catholic convert – who he would go on to meet on Easter Sunday hours before his death - for his theological defence of deportations. On the peripheries of Europe, the migrant crisis may have somewhat waned, but in Lesbos and other places where people continue to arrive, albeit in smaller numbers, locals and newcomers are now bonded by the knowledge that with Francis' passing they have lost one of their greatest champions yet.
