As the woman rots away in prison she also has to endure the mockery of speculation about her suffering.

Do a computer search for "ISIS" and "Christians" and prepare to gasp in horror. ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or simply Islamic State) is slaughtering Christians in the Middle East in a war on Christianity that is more deadly than the one between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

While most of the Western world focused on Gaza last summer, ISIS was murdering people mercilessly. And as shouts of outrage concerning the war in Gaza proliferated, the virtual silence on the war against Christians was deafening.

“It is painful to see that the struggle against hunger and malnutrition is hindered by “market priorities”” the Pope said at the Second International Conference on Nutrition taking place this week in Rome. When there is no solidarity people revolt against the institutions. The water wars was one of the topics discussed

On Nov. 21, 1964, Pope Paul VI solemnly promulgated the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, which began by proclaiming Christ the “light of the nations” and is thus known as Lumen Gentium. Twenty-five years later, on the night of Nov. 9-10, 1989, the Berlin Wall was breached and the communist project in Europe collapsed, reduced to rubble like the masonry that divided Germany for decades. Fifty years after Lumen Gentium and 25 years after the Revolution of 1989, we can see more clearly that the Council had something to do with the communist crack-up.

The community’s founder, Andrea Riccardi, sends out another appeal to save Aleppo with the UN’s backing. Christian, Muslim and government representatives will be meeting on the Mediterranean island from 5 to 6 March.

Francis took part in the International Interreligious Colloquium on the Complementarity of Man and Woman promoted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

At the Pope Francis' General Audience in St. Peter’s Square, November 12, he sent out an appeal for persecuted Christians. He stressed that bishops, priests and deacons must not be authoritarian and can learn something from those who are far from the faith. The Pope condemned drug trafficking remembering the 43 Mexican students who were burnt alive.

Two months after 3-year-old Christina Khider Abada was snatched by Islamic State militants from a bus as her family helplessly watched, Ayda Abada wonders about the fate of her daughter.

Now sheltering in an unfinished building in the Christian enclave of Ainkawa outside of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan area of northern Iraq, Abada replays the scene over and over in her mind.

“Everything that was happening when Rome fell is happening again now,” my 12-year-old informed me. “My teacher has a whole list.”

On August 22, 1939, Adolf Hitler, explaining his decision to invade Poland, asked, "Who after all speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

On the centennial of the massacre of the Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, it is pertinent to ask, sixty-five years later, if the world is sufficiently aware of the persecutions of Christians, discrimination against them, the lack of respect shown for freedom of religion, and indeed the possible end of Christianity in the Arab and Muslim countries of the Middle East.