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(Vatican Radio) Police in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia say they have filed criminal charges against 15 people suspected of being involved in a violent attack against Parliament. The development come amid mounting international concern about what analysts view as the most alarming development in the Balkan nation since it lurched into political gridlock more than two years ago. 

Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:

Macedonian police say more than a dozen people have now been charged for "participation in a mob and preventing officials from performing their duties." Months of political tensions boiled over Thursday.

Scores of demonstrators stormed the parliament in the capital Skopje, and attacked several lawmakers. The protesters were angry that an ethnic Albanian deputy was elected speaker. 

Some wearing black masks to hide their faces, were seen throwing chairs, camera equipment, and punches and later continued the clashes outside the building. 

More than 100 people were injured in the violence, most of them protesters. Police officers and about a dozen lawmakers also were injured including the Social Democrat leader Zoran Zaev, who was left with blood pouring down his face.

ETHNIC ALBANIAN PARTIES

He has created a coalition with ethnic Albanian parties, but his attempts to form a government have been blocked by the president. Macedonian nationalists have been protesting on the streets since Zaev tried to form the coalition.

Elections were held in December 2016 but no government has been formed yet.

Among the demonstrators are supporters of ex-Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski's VMRO party, who are demanding new elections. 

Western diplomats have expressed concern that authorities failed to prevent the attack and did not provide the necessary security for lawmakers and journalists present at parliament.

In a statement the heads of the European Union delegation, the U.S. Embassy, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe mission and the NATO military alliance office in Macedonia said the attack on a state institution "which is at the heart of democracy is an attack on democracy itself." 

RUSSIA BLAMES WEST

But Russia has blamed the West for what it views as meddling in the Balkan nation's internal affairs.

The simmering tensions in Macedonia and the opposing views of powerful nations have led to concerns that the former Yugoslav republic, which narrowly escaped all-out civil war in 2001, could see a wider conflict and become another flashpoint for increasingly frosty relations between Russia and the West.

Amid the turmoil, Macedonian president Gjorge Ivanov appealed for calm saying "there are no questions that cannot be resolved through dialogue" and he invited all the leaders of parliamentary parties to come to his office to discuss the situation. 

About 2,000 protesters have gathered in Skopje on Friday to demand new elections they hope will break the country’s political deadlock. The peaceful protest was held outside the European Union mission in Skopje a day after the violent protests. 

Yet there are no signs yet that a political solution will be found for what observers view as this Balkan nation's biggest crisis in years. 

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New York City, N.Y., May 1, 2017 / 10:59 am (CNA).- Editor’s note: Some readers may find the content of this article and video disturbing.

In a deeply emotional speech in New York, award winning actress Blake Lively shone a spotlight on the crisis of child pornography, calling for greater awareness and resources to fight the epidemic.

“Sexual exploitation of children is something that isn’t happening rarely, it’s not happening worlds away,” she said. “It’s happening right here and right now.”

Lively was among Variety's 2017 Power of Women: New York honorees. She used her April 21 speech to draw attention to the Child Rescue Coalition, a group that helps identify IP addresses that are trading child pornography, and gives that information to law enforcement.

Police can then use that information to find the people who are engaged in trading child pornography, which is a felony.

Lively began her speech by saying that her deep concern for the topic of child pornography arose from the fact that she is a mother with two young children.

“I would do anything to protect them. I would literally die for them, without a moment’s thought,” she said.

From a mother’s perspective, she said that she was devastated upon realizing how common child pornography is, and that the children who are victims are often too young to speak up for themselves or report the crimes being committed against them.

What’s even more disturbing, she said, is that as viewers of child pornography become desensitized, they start looking for younger and younger children.

Just how young? Lively said that a law enforcement officer who has worked in child pornography prevention told her that he found pornographic videos of infants, with their umbilical cord still attached.

And the acts that these children are enduring are unspeakable, she said, including rape, torture, bondage and bestiality, among other acts.

“Anything you can think of, it’s out there and it’s being traded. And it’s 30-50 million files a day being traded, that we know of.”

Also alarming – the statistics indicate that the majority of child porn viewers are or will become abusers themselves.

“This is so prevalent, and I want you guys to know this, and I want it to resonate with you,” Lively said.

She stressed the importance of proactive groups like the Child Rescue Coalition, which in just three years has helped find 9,000 predators and has save 2,000 children.

Noting that her audience consisted of many wealthy, well-connected people, she asked for help in connecting Child Rescue Coalition to big companies for the purpose of forming partnerships, as well as for donations so that the group can continue offering its free services to law enforcement.

 

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IMAGE: CNS/Paul Haring

By Dale Gavlak

AMMAN, Jordan (CNS) -- Pope Francis' historic, 72-hour visit to Cairo has left a profound mark on Egyptians, Catholic leaders said, as they anticipate increased ties with fellow Orthodox Christians and Muslims.

"The pope's visit was a big blessing to the Egyptians, both Muslims and Christians. It boosted the morale of the Egyptian people, especially after the Palm Sunday blasts," Father Rafic Greiche, spokesman for the Egyptian bishops, told Catholic News Service by phone. "He gave a message of love, peace and hope."

Father Greiche referred to a pair of terrorist attacks April 9 at two Egyptian churches. The Islamic State group claimed credit for the attacks, which killed at least 45 people, injured more than 100 others and shook the Middle East's largest Christian community to the core.

"The pope's visit for Catholics in Egypt was a great happening, very positive," Jesuit Father Samir Khalil Samir, a noted Egyptian Catholic theologian and Islamic studies scholar, told CNS. The professor teaches at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome and St. Joseph's University in Beirut.

Even more important, he said, was the historic improvement in ecumenical ties between the Catholic and the Coptic Orthodox churches. Pope Francis and Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II signed a declaration on common baptism.

"This was a big step," said Father Samir.

"In Egypt, there are a lot of mixed marriages between Catholics and Orthodox," Father Samir explained, citing the previous Coptic Orthodox requirement that new members joining the church -- including those who had previously been baptized as Catholic -- had to be baptized again.

"This was very unhappy," he said. Now both churches agreed to recognize each other's sacrament of baptism and pledged to continue working toward greater unity.

"In general, the ecumenical relations with the Coptic Orthodox Church made very good steps and can go further," Father Samir predicted, citing a possible reconciliation over the celebration dates of Christmas and Easter.

He also said Pope Francis and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi reached a better understanding. This is important for the country's Christians, who are among the oldest communities in the Middle East, dating back to the apostle Mark.

"By meeting (el-Sissi) and having a normal, positive relationship, the pope is supporting the only one who can help the Christians," the theologian said. "Being a very pious Muslim, el-Sissi is also the one trying to protect the Christians against ISIS."

Pope Francis has backed Egypt's efforts to tackle Islamic militancy, saying the country has a special role to play in forging regional peace as well as in "vanquishing all violence and terrorism."

Yet, Father Greiche believes it may be difficult to protect Christians and other Egyptians from growing acts of extremist violence.

"Criminal acts are designed in the heads of terrorists first. You cannot say that Christians are safe or anybody is safe from any terrorist attack. We pray and we ask for our Savior to help us and not to experience more than what we already have," the priest said.

"We cannot say that Christians will be more safe (due to the pope's visit), because terrorists are always there," he added.

However, Pope Francis' call to expose extremist violence carried out in God's name impacted Sheik Ahmad el-Tayeb, who heads al-Azhar University in Cairo. He hosted the International Peace Conference attended by Pope Francis, Pope Tawadros and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of the Eastern Orthodox churches.

Although "ISIS will not listen to whatever the pope says," Pope Francis has now put the Vatican's relationship with al-Azhar on a stronger footing, said Father Samir.

As the world's highest authority in Sunni Islam, al-Azhar trains Muslim clerics and scholars from around the world and has the potential to change the discourse.

Critics, including el-Sissi, complain the university is not doing enough to properly challenge Islamist extremists on theological grounds. However, scholars also point to a dichotomy in the Quran in which Islam's Prophet Muhammad at times espoused peaceful interactions with Christians and Jews and at other times violence.

By emphasizing nonviolence and that "only peaceful means are acceptable, it will help some Muslims to go along this line -- to be nonviolent," Father Samir said. "The main thing is change the mentality of Muslims, especially of the teaching of Islam, which is mainly the teaching in al-Azhar. "

Father Samir also pointed to another challenge.

"In the last five to six years, there is a new element, the militarization of radical Islam," he said. The scholar blames the United States and some European countries for providing arms to Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which allegedly finance radical Islamic movements.

"The problem is much larger. It's a question of rethinking Islam," Father Samir said.

Pope Francis also met with Egyptian seminarians, priests and religious before wrapping up his Cairo visit, leaving a deep impression on them, too.

"He greatly encouraged us to live a life dedicated to Christ, the living hope. And to instill that hope in all we minister to: the disabled, the poor and disadvantaged," Father Shenouda Andraos, the head of St. Leo Great Coptic Catholic Seminary, told CNS.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/courtesy Diocese of Tyler

By Mark Pattison

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In the insurance world, extreme weather events such as tornadoes are often referred to as "acts of God."

But in the small Texas town of Emory, about 50 miles northwest of Tyler and 70 miles east of Dallas, some 45 people are considering it an act of God that they survived a twister that took out all of their church except for the hallway in which they were huddled.

The providential event took place the evening of April 29, as severe storms tore through Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas on a northeasterly path that killed at least 13 people in three states.

The youth ministry at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Emory was hosting a dinner honoring the parish's graduating high school seniors in conjunction with the parish's Knights of Columbus council and its ladies' guild.

"I got a phone call from Maggie (Conder), the volunteer in the office," youth minister Monica Hughes told Catholic News Service May 1. "I almost didn't answer, because I didn't want to interrupt the speaker." But Hughes knew Conder was monitoring the paths of storms in Texas, and "she wouldn't have interrupted unless it was important," Hughes said.

It was: "The tornado that hit Canton was heading straight for us," she recalled.

Hughes said she and her husband both tried to pull up weather radar on their cellphones without luck. Then Hughes made the decision to tell teens and adults to move to the church hallway. The decision, she said, was based on "this instinct when you learn when you're a child -- you go to the hallway and you cover your head."

There was some grumbling by the teens but everyone complied, Hughes remembers. "It's the innermost place of the building," she said of the hallway. "Everything else had exterior walls. On my way, I went around and I locked all the exterior doors to the building -- just one little extra step to keep the wind from ripping them open."

Thirty seconds after Hughes got into the hallway after completing her rounds, " my husband said, 'It's hitting.' He saw the roof of the sanctuary rip off -- one piece. We saw the doors fly open into the sanctuary space. My husband grabbed the door and he held on with everything (he had) to the other," Hughes said. "What I saw was people covering each other, comforting each other -- parents covering small children, teenagers huddling together. We began to pray."

The parish's deacon, Marcelino Espinosa, was at one end of the hallway as he began a rosary; Hughes was at the other end beginning the Divine Mercy chaplet.

"We didn't have this horrible fear, we felt protected," she told CNS. "The whole time that we were in there and we were holding those doors, I felt that Jesus was over us ... whispering to me, 'It's OK, I've got you.'"

She added, "I described it ... as a Passover. The tornado came, and it his us with full force and it was over."

After a quick assessment of the damage, the group decided to stay put as another storm was bearing down on them. Firefighters coming after the second storm advised them to evacuate as the combination of a downed power line and a gas leak threatened catastrophe, Hughes said.

Once outside, they saw the church was destroyed -- except for the hallway. The pastor's house nearby was spared, save for a damaged backyard fence. One irony in the storm: Hughes' 22-year-old daughter, who was at the dinner as well, had been evacuated in March from Peru where flooding and landslides wiped out destroyed entire communities. "And now we had to pluck her out of a tornado," Hughes said.

"It's a miracle," declared the pastor, Father Victor Hernandez. "People could experience the hands of God protecting them. He was not at the dinner, having been summoned to celebrate Mass in Pittsburgh, Texas, about 75 minutes from Emory. On his drive back, "I heard the sirens go off and I wanted to be with my community," he said.

Parishioners celebrated Mass as usual April 30, but outside on parish property. "We're going to come out of this stronger than ever," Father Hernandez said. "We are going to have a new building and church, which was not in our plans. We are going to move bigger and faster."

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Follow Pattison on Twitter: @MeMarkPattison.

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Copyright © 2017 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

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