A CALL for global action to combat poverty went out yesterday from an Indian Christian leader visiting Bahrain. Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere, said one of the senior-most bishops of the Indian Orthodox Church, the Most Reverend Dr Geevarghese Mar Osthathios.

People cannot develop their families or nation without developing their neighbours, said Dr Mar Osthathios, who is a social reformer and founder of several orphanages and other charity projects in India...

Dr Mar Osthathios was welcomed at the airport yesterday by St Mary's Orthodox Church officials, led by vicar Father Kuriakose Thannikkotu...

Interfax-Religion - Moscow,Russia
Gulbene (Latvia), December 27, Interfax - Satanists desecrated an Orthodox church in the town of Stameriene, Gulbene district in Latvia, BNS agency reported on Tuesday.

A pentagram - a five-pointed star in a circle and an inscription ‘You will have to worship the Satan’ in Latvian - was painted on the wall near the entrance to the church...

Kazinform - Astana,Kazakhstan
MOSCOW-ASTANA, December 28. KAZINFORM. - A Russian-Iranian theological commission on the dialogue between Islam and Eastern Orthodox Christianity will hold a conference in Teheran from February 27 through March 4, 2006, Mertopolitan Cyril of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, who heads the department for external relations at Moscow Patriarchate, said Tuesday at a session of the Holy Synod of the Russian Church...

Two years ago, I wrote a column called
"The Hijacking of Christmas". In it, I did a "four corners analysis" of various points to show that Santa Claus is a mythical character that is designed (by Satan) to distract Christians from the true meaning of Christmas...

AsiaNews.it - Italy
The three sacred buildings of Orthodox, Armenians and Catholics, recall the first martyr, whose body is said to have passed from the place. There is the custom of offering bread and roast mutton...

A few hundred metres from this church, there is an Armenian Orthodox Church -- rebuilt in 1826 and restored to pristine state in 1985 -- as well as the Catholic church of the Capuchins; both have also been dedicated to St Stephen for centuries...

SF.Indymedia.org - San Francisco,CA,USA
In late December, the plains of North India turn suddenly cold and grey...

The Koran calls Christians the 'nearest in love' to Muslims, whom it instructs in to "dispute not with the People of the Book [that is, the Jews and Christians] save in the most courteous manner… and say 'we believe in what has been sent down to us and what has been sent down to you; our God and your God is one'" ...

The Muslim form of prayer with its bowings and prostrations appears to derive from the older Syrian Orthodox tradition that is still practised in pewless churches across the Levant...