Updated 03/09/15
MARKHAM, ONT. - Christians in the Middle East should not be considered as collateral damage of the wars in Syria and Iraq, says Patriarch Mor Ignatius Aphrem II during his first apostolic visit to Canada.

AMMAN, Jordan - Dozens of Christians are feared to be among the 230 people abducted by Islamic State after the extremist group's militants captured a central Syrian town in early August.

JERUSALEM - Christians in the Middle East are facing difficulties ranging from "bad" to "less bad," said Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal of Jerusalem.

AMMAN, Jordan - Arab Christians are viewing with growing concern and revulsion an uptick in kidnappings of both their clergy and civilians as violence worsens in Syria and Iraq.

WASHINGTON - A sign at the entrance to the exhibit warns of the shocking nature of the images beyond — photos smuggled out of Syria that show emaciated and grotesquely mutilated victims of dictator Bashar Assad’s prisons and torture chambers.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis on June 19 criticized world powers for their failure to find a solution to the Syrian conflict, saying the country’s Christians had been united by “the blood of the martyrs” lost in war.

A serious-looking Pope Francis on Wednesday (June 10) spoke with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, in a meeting focused on conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East that pose complex and contrasting diplomatic challenges for the two leaders.

VATICAN CITY - Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Pope Francis on June 10, with pressure on the pontiff to speak up about the Kremlin’s role in the Ukraine conflict.

OXFORD, England - French Catholics have urged church support for a campaign to stop Western companies from buying oil from Islamic State, in effect funding the mass killing of Christians.

AMMAN, Jordan - Church bells are ringing once again in the Assyrian Christian villages dotting the Khabur River in northeastern Syria after Islamic State militants were routed by a combination of forces.

RHODES, Greece - Migrants pay thousands of dollars to human traffickers in countries like Turkey and Libya to ferry them to what they hope are the greener pastures of Europe. The growing crises in places like Libya allow traffickers to work almost unobstructed.

ROME - Chaldean Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo, Syria, and his people are exhausted.

WASHINGTON - The sad realities of Syria's civil war permeate the paintings of Essa Neima, a 34-year-old Syrian national.

At a recent exhibit, his oil on acrylic works ranged from depictions of damaged church and mosque mosaics, to a broken icon of Mary and a refugee woman forced into servitude by the need to survive.

OTTAWA - As Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) Canada marks its 10th anniversary this year, it is making an urgent appeal for continued help for imperilled families under Islamic State siege in Iraq and Syria.

PARIS - The exodus of Christians from the Middle East — due to wars, conflicts, socio-economic crises and persecution — will weaken moderate Islam "which, thanks to the Islamic-Christian conviviality, is so far the vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East," said Lebanese Cardinal Bechara Rai.