Francis greeted Sister Gloria Cecilia Narváez Argoti on Sunday before celebrating Mass at the Vatican and blessed her after it. The Mass was part of the formal opening process leading up to the assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 2023.

Narváez (59) was kidnapped in February 2017 in southern Mali, where she had been serving as a missionary for more than 10 years.

A member of the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate, Narváez had been taken by a group of armed men who broke into the parish in Karangasso village near the Burkina Faso border in February 2017.

She had been working there as a missionary for six years in the parish with three other nuns.

According to a one of the sisters who witnessed the kidnapping, Narváez offered herself in place of two younger nuns the kidnappers were preparing to take.

Throughout the four years until her release on Saturday last week, church officials, governments and intelligence services worked had worked to ensure her safety and secure her release.

A source close to the negotiations for Narváez's liberation says she hadn't been mistreated and that she had learned the Quran during her captivity.

In a letter sent through the Red Cross in July 2017 to her brother in Colombia, Narváez said she was being held by the "Group to Support Islam and Muslims," a group linked to al-Qaida and the largest jihadist alliance in the Sahel.

She appeared in a video in early 2018, begging the pope and her Colombian mother superior to intervene. Another video later that year showed her with six other Western hostages.

In a second video from June 2018, she was shown alongside the French hostage Sophie Petronin and again addressed Pope Francis.

In 2018, Colombian Archbishop José Ruiz Arenas, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, confirmed "the church has been very vigilant, not only in the heart and the prayer of the Holy Father, but also in his concern to seek" her release.

In October 2020 Petronin, who had been released, expressed concern about the Colombian nun's health. (Following Narváez's release, Police have confirmed she is suffering from problems with a leg and a kidney.)

Petronin also said the group holding Narváez at that time was the Support Group for Islam and Muslims led by Iyad Ag Ghali, which has been rampant in Mali since 2017.

In February this year, Archbishop Francisco Javier Múnera Correa president of the episcopal commission for missionary animation re-launched an appeal for Narváez.

The Franciscan Sisters also rallied to help their sister, collecting over 90,000 signatures on a petition for her release.

Her release last Saturday was confirmed by Bishop Mario de Jesús Álvarez Gómez.

He thanked the Holy See, the Apostolic Nunciature of Colombia and the Episcopal Conference of Colombia for their help.

Colombia's government said Narváez's release involved working with multiple contacts and leaders in Africa.

Source

• La Croix
• La Croix
• Crux
• Image: Catholic News Agency

Taylor, who is currently in a Kurdish prison in Syria, said in an interview with The National that his faith had wavered several times, going from born-again Christian, to atheist, to a more 'open minded' Christian, and eventually converting to Islam. Read more

He said the attacks are part of the "war on infidels" IS is fighting.

He also claimed his group was responsible for the suicide bombings that struck two Coptic Christian churches on Palm Sunday. Forty-seven people died and many more were injured.

Speaking in an interview published in the IS al-Nabaa newsletter last week, the spokesperson urged all Muslims to work as jihadists.

They should focus on "legitimate targets" like churches and security posts, as well as "places where crusader nationals of western countries gather".

If Muslims don't join jihadist groups, they should carry out "lone wolf attacks," he said.

He also said Muslims who don't attack Christians are antagonistic to the Islamic religion, are apostate and had better "hurry up and repent".

Coptic Christians in Egypt have been targeted by IS jihadists for several decades.

The Palm Sunday attacks prompted Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to declare a state of emergency for the next three months.

Source

• ABC News
• Crux
• Image: Citizens

Mark Spencer has promoted the use of Extreme Disruption Orders (EDOs) to prevent teachers disseminating the idea that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.

EDOs are a new anti-hate-speech measure introduced in the UK.

They are designed to prevent the spreading of radical ideas by jihadists.

Another reason for the introduction of EDOs is the promotion of "British values", defined in the past as including democracy and tolerance.

Mr Spencer wrote in a letter to a constituent that Christian teachers were still entitled to teach their views on same-sex marriage, but only in certain situations.

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Archbishop Justin Welby told faith leaders earlier this month that Britain's religious communities must do more to provide an alternative to extremism which gives young people a "purpose in life".

He also warned against being too quick to brand people and groups with strong views on religious matters as extremists.

Nothing will ever be achieved if the only conversations which take place involve "nice people talking to nice people about being nice", he said.

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The forces fighting Israel are essentially the same as those trying to remove Bashar al-Assad in Syria and those seeking to take over Afghanistan on the borders with Russia - radical Sunni jihadists, most notably the group ISIS who look back to the tradition of the conquering caliphate.

Their sworn enemy is not primarily the liberal West or the imperial United States, but instead Catholic and Orthodox Christendom.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State stretching from Iraq to Syria, has called on Muslims to rally behind his pan-Islamic project:

"Rush O Muslims to your state. It is your state.

"Syria is not for Syrians and Iraq is not for Iraqis. The land is for the Muslims, all Muslims.

"This is my advice to you. If you hold to it you will conquer Rome and own the world, if Allah wills."

This should come as no surprise to anyone.

For decades Sunni jihadists have waged war on Christian oriental communities across the Middle East and North Africa, while other Islamic extremists are fighting Russian Orthodoxy in the Caucasus and throughout Central Asia.

In novel and frightening ways, this pits the militant strands of Sunni Islam not only against the more traditional forms of Sufism, including the Alawites in Syria, but also the remnants of Christendom.

I shall return to the importance of Christendom in due course. But first, a number of points need to be made about the contemporary global geopolitical situation.

The end of Westphalia and the rise of "neo-medievalism"

To begin with, we are witnessing the death throes of the Westphalian system that was dominated by national states and transnational markets, in which great powers could simply buy off small countries and rule by proxy. Continue reading

Sources

• ABC Religion and Ethics
• Image: The Telegraph
• See also: Christendom at War, in Catholic Vote and Persecution of Christians by ISIS contradicts idea of a Caliphate in The Conversation.

Now that women are having to cover up with the abaya, or at least keep a veil handy when they venture out, just in case (something previously inconceivable in Syria), now the press is reporting the establishment of sharia courts which, according to the Washington Post, pass sentences "daily and indiscriminately" on Christians and anyone else who violates precepts of Wahhabi Islam.

Now that the economy has been brought to its knees by the widespread destruction and looting of stores and workshops; now that famine is at hand in the city of Aleppo, and foodstuffs are to be had only at enormous prices; now that the terrorists have reached Homs and Aleppo and the mountains above Damascus—now at last the press seems to have stopped describing the rebels' fight as a high-minded struggle for "freedom."

Syrian culture used to be distinctive among the lands of the Middle East for a coexistence between Christians and Muslims which went beyond mere tolerant forbearance, a reality of which Syrians were proud. Under the iron fist of the ruling Alawite dictators, who kept fundamentalists at bay, a good degree of religious freedom was preserved. Christians fleeing persecution in other Middle East countries found refuge in Assad's Syria, including Iraqi Catholics fleeing post-Saddam persecution. Continue reading

Sources

• The Catholic World Report
• Image: Future Challenges