+ PAPIST + FILIOQUIST + AZYMITE +: Russian patriarch seeks 'powerful reply' to train bomb

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Russian patriarch seeks 'powerful reply' to train bomb

By Conor Humphries

MOSCOW
Nov 29 (Reuters)

The head of Russia's Orthodox Church on Sunday called on authorities to give a "powerful reply" to the people behind a train bombing that killed 25 people, as police probed whether Islamist rebels were involved.

A blast derailed a high-speed Russian train on Friday night on the main line between Moscow and Russia's second city, St Petersburg, raising fears of a new wave of attacks five years after a bombing campaign in Moscow by Chechen rebels.

"We believe the reply will be effective and powerful enough to show these shameful, terrible people that ... when the hand of an enemy is lifted against our lives, we are able to defend our citizens," Patriarch Kirill said at a memorial service in Moscow.

The comments were the strongest statement of anger against the perpetrators by a senior public figure. President Dmitry Medvedev on Saturday called for calm and ordered officials to do everything to help the victims of the attack.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast, but security analysts said militant groups from Russia's mainly Muslim North Caucasus were the most likely culprits.

A claim of responsibility by Islamist rebels could heighten tensions between Russia's Christian majority and its Muslim minority weeks after an Orthodox priest who was critical of Islam was shot dead in his church.

Russian investigators on Sunday combed the site of the blast and questioned residents of the rural area where it happened. The Emergency Ministry said 25 people were confirmed dead.

Passenger services resumed on the track on Sunday, with commuter trains rolling past an overturned carriage disguised by a green camouflage net, television pictures showed.

Television stations cancelled entertainment shows on Sunday and football matches observed a minute of silence.

(editors note: okey dokey...ee gads!)

Pope Urges Pastors
to Learn and Teach Liturgy

Pope Benedict XVI is encouraging pastors to catechize parishioners about the depth of the liturgy and the meaning of the sacraments as encounters with God.
The Pope affirmed this in a meeting Feb. 26 with parish priests of the Diocese of Rome, a Lenten tradition, in which he answered their questions and concerns.
He noted, "What is really important for me is that the sacraments [...] not be something foreign along with more contemporary endeavors." He added, "It can easily happen that the sacrament remains somewhat isolated in a more pragmatic context and becomes a reality that is not altogether inserted in the totality of our being."
The Pontiff stressed the need for catechesis in the parishes. He affirmed that it is important that God "not be distant but reconcilable, concrete, that he enter our lives and really be a friend with whom we can talk and who talks with us."
He continued, "We must learn to celebrate the Eucharist, learn to know Jesus Christ, the God with a human face, up close, really enter into contact with him, learn to listen to him and to allow him to enter into us."
Sacramental communion, explained the Holy Father, is not just taking a piece of bread, but rather is opening "my heart so that the Risen One will enter the context of my being, so that he is within me and not just outside of me, and thus speaks with me and transforms my being."
"He gives me the sense of justice, the dynamism of justice, in zeal for the Gospel," noted Benedict XVI.
He affirmed, "This celebration, in which God not only comes close to us, but enters into the fabric of our existence, is essential to really be able to live with God and for God and to take the light of God to this world."
Body of Christ
The Pope stated that this understanding also "leads me to the other because the other receives the same Christ, as I do."
He continued: "Hence, if the same Christ is in him and me, we also are no longer separate individual beings. Herein lies the birth of the doctrine of the Body of Christ, because we have all been incorporated if we receive the Eucharist correctly in the same Christ.
"Hence, my neighbor is truly close: we are no longer two separate 'I's, but we are united in the same 'I' of Christ."
The Pontiff told the pastors that "Eucharistic and sacramental catechesis must really go to the depth of our existence, to be, in fact, education to open myself to the voice of God, to let myself be opened to break this original sin of egoism and to open my existence profoundly, so that I will really be just."
He noted, "We must all learn the liturgy better, not as something exotic but as the heart of our being Christian, which does not open easily to a distant man, but which is, on the other hand, precisely openness to the other, to the world."
The Holy Father emphasized: "We must all collaborate in celebrating the Eucharist ever more profoundly: not only as a rite but as an existential process that touches me profoundly, more than anything else, and changes me, transforms me and, by transforming me, sparks the transformation of the world that the Lord desires and of which He wishes to make me an instrument."

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Russian patriarch seeks 'powerful reply' to train bomb

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