Marina Markos, a Coptic Orthodox Christian refugee from Cairo, Egypt, plunged into the 2016 Christmas season in Queens, New York — the city she now calls home, after immigrating to the United States earlier this year.

Delighted by the Christmas decorations that festoon local stores and the holiday greetings publicly exchanged by friends and acquaintances, Markos remembered the more restricted celebrations of her religious community in Egypt.

“Christmas is about preparing our hearts and then our homes to receive Jesus as a baby,” Markos told the Register.

This is not intended to propagate the significance of the Restaurant of Mercy, but rather to shed light on its grand message. The Restaurant of Mercy is Jordanian. It was launched almost a year ago with the initiative of Caritas Jordan (Caritas means love in German) and the Latin Vicariate. This restaurant took a nonpareil coverage by different media outlets over the past year. Why? Becuase it is a charity restaurant that offers hot meals on daily bases for free to whoever gets in.

A journey through the country with the highest intake of refugees in the world (accounting for around 30%-40% of the population), that is trying to turn over a new leaf after two years of political vacuum

In his speech to a group of new ambassadors to the Holy See, Francis decried the scandalous spending on weapons, while many people lack the basics they need to live

"The Catholic Center for Studies and Media (CCSM) in Jordan strongly condemns and denounces the heinous terrorist explosion perpetrated yesterday on the Orthodox Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Cairo which led to the martyrdom of 25 worshippers during Sunday Mass."

In his World Day of Peace Message for 2017, Pope Francis calls on Christians to follow Jesus’ example in turning away from violence. The pontiff says that while the world is experiencing many conflicts, violence only begets more violence.

Pope Francis has called on Christians around the globe to embrace Jesus’ teachings on nonviolence, saying in his yearly World Day of Peace message that while many countries are experiencing conflict that “violence is not the cure for our broken world.”

During his weekly Angelus address, Pope Francis again appealed on Sunday, December 11, for an end to the fighting in Aleppo. He also expressed closeness to the victims of Sunday’s terror attack in Cairo.

Pope Francis has again appealed for an end to the brutal fighting in the Syrian city of Aleppo, calling war a “pile-up of tyrannies and lies” and asking people to say “no to destruction, yes to peace.”

At the end of his weekly Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square Sunday, the pontiff said: “Every day I am close, most of all in prayer, to the people of Aleppo.”

Interview with the Apostolic Administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa: “Millions of refugees have changed the shape of our parishes. I don’t think those who have fled will want to return to Syria and Iraq”

The Pope said this in an interview with Belgian Catholic weekly Tertio. “Priest must not be ashamed of tenderness,” he stressed, adding that the media must not fall prey “to the sickness of coprophilia, which is always wanting to communicate scandal, to communicate ugly things”

The Polish Pope’s former spokesman said the late Fidel Castro “wanted to know everything there was to know about John Paul II”.