Decades of hostility by organized crime toward the Catholic Church in Italy allegedly surfaced anew when a priest who had received death threats found bleach in wine he was about to serve for Holy Communion.
Premier Christian Radio host Justin Brierley is optimistic about a steady resurgence of belief in God, while historian Tom Holland believes the confident atheism spearheaded by the likes of Richard Dawkins in the 2000s has "crumbled and collapsed".
On March 4, 2024, a joint session of France’s parliament voted 780-72 to revise France’s constitution to include a “guaranteed freedom” for abortion. This happened after a majority of the French senate voted last Wednesday to accept the wording of the amendment of article 34 of the constitution. Now France has become the first country to enshrine abortion in their constitution.
On February 5, 2024, Catholic former Dutch prime minister Dries van Agt passed away “hand in hand” with his wife Eugenie van Agt-Krekelberg when they both undertook “duo euthanasia.” Van Agt and his wife both had “delicate health conditions.” They had been married for 70 years and were 93 years old. According to the Guardian, their deaths are part of a growing duo euthanasia trend in the Netherlands.
“We are facing three major crises today,” he said. But the crises he was referring to were not the outward contributors to orphanhood and vulnerability among children, such as war, drug abuse, climate change or pandemics – all very relevant and important to understand in the context of a global event that seeks to address them.
In the summer of 2022, members of the National Council of French Evangelicals (CNEF) launched a website (Stop-Abus.fr) where victims and witnesses of sexual abuse can report abuse and find more information on sexual abuse with links and sources curated by CNEF. The site also provides resources on how to manage sexual abuse and misconduct within Evangelical churches and organizations.
German parliamentarians seek to ban Christians and other right-to-life advocates from standing near abortion clinics under a draft law proceeding through the Bundestag.
Few of us imagined that the Ukrainian resistance would last long against the feared might of the Russian army. Memories were stirred of the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 when the vastly outnumbered Dutch army resisted for four days before surrendering on May 14, immediately after Hitler’s ruthless blitzkrieg destroyed the historic heart of Rotterdam.
Two years after Russia invaded Ukraine, families in the country are desperate and looking to the Church for support, putting clergy under huge pressure.
On January 31 in London, a young woman and her child were attacked with acid by an asylum seeker from Afghanistan. He was granted asylum status after a local priest supported his testimony of conversion to the Christian faith. Some British politicians have responded by accusing churches of helping migrants avoid deportation by deliberately fast-tracking conversions.
The Future of Church Safeguarding, by Professor Alexis Jay, former Chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), identified "shortcomings" with current safeguarding arrangements, including a lack of independent scrutiny and trust between the Church and victims.
A Muslim teacher at an Islamic school in eastern Uganda who became a Christian on Oct. 4 was killed on Oct. 21, area sources said.
