Source: Public Orthodoxy PRIME MINISTER AHMED FORCED TO TALK TO THE ETHIOPIAN ORTHODOX TEWAHDO CHURCH by Habtom Yohannes What initially seemed an internal conflict between the Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church (EtOTC) and an Oromo breakaway synod of 28 bishops, has developed into an open clash between the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the EtOTC. The current struggle is actually a scramble over who has ownership of the nation: the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church or the Ethiopian nation-state? And who owns “the church”: the Amhara, the Tegaru, or the Oromo, or the three of them equally?…
Browsing: Ethiopia
Source: Borkena Security forces in the Silte zone reportedly failed to stop the attacks on churches and the killings of Christians A day after the tragic incident in Gondar where a reportedly escalated clash between two individuals from Islamic faith and Orthodox Church followers claimed 14 lives, according to the government, at least three churches were blazed with fire. According to EOTV church TV, the perpetrators were what it called radicals [apparently from Islamic faith]. They broke into Rufael Church in Worabe , and vandalised it before they set it on fire. They also burned St. Gabriel and two other churches. Apart…
Source: BBC News By Fasikaw Menberu & Farouk Chothia BBC Amharic & BBC News “I fight with both of them – the prayer and the bullet,” said Father Gebremariam Aderaw. The monk, whose name means “servant of Mary”, signed up to join the Ethiopian military, weeks after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed called on all able-bodied men to join the fight against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). It launched a rebellion in November in its heartland of Tigray after a bitter fall-out with Mr Abiy over his political reforms. “When I saw the country collapse… and the priests being killed,…
Source: Christian Post By Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor At least 500 Christians have been killed in an ongoing spate of coordinated door-to-door attacks and thousands of traumatized survivors have fled for their lives over the last two months in southern Ethiopia’s Oromia regional state, including its capital Addis Ababa, according to reports. Members of Qeerroo (which means “bachelors”), a youth movement of men from the ethnic Oromo group who have traditionally been Muslim, have allegedly gone on a killing spree in some parts of the Oromia regional state, extending south, southeast and east of Addis Ababa, since the assassination of…
Source: Independent Catholic News At least seven Orthodox churches have been attacked and set on fire, and six priests and several faithful have been killed in the Somali region of Ethiopia. Clashes began at the end of last week, when armed men of the Liyu militia, of ethnic Somali and under the orders of Abdi Illey (President of the Somali Region) tried to interrupt a meeting between members of the regional parliament and representatives of the city of Dire Daua, with the intent of denouncing the violation of human rights in the region. The Ethiopian army deployed its troops to…
Source: CAJ News Africa From ADANE BIKILA in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia ADDIS ABABA, (CAJ News) – CHURCHES have called for restraint from protesters and state security following the killing of 100 demonstrators in Ethiopia over the last fortnight. Reports indicate the protestors were killed in Oromia and Amhara. It is reported over 500 have been killed since November last year following the anti-government protests began among the Oromo, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, and spread to the second largest ethnic group, the Amhara. Peter Prove, director of the World Council of Churches Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, mourned the…
Source: Inquirer.net By: Lito B. Zulueta LALIBELA, Ethiopia—Filipino Catholics who have resolved to visit the Holy Land at least once in their lifetime but are discouraged by the tinderbox situation in the Middle East may have found the next best option in this ancient mountain town in northern Ethiopia. Here, huge whole ancient churches carved from mountain rocks have been drawing, since medieval times, Ethiopian Orthodox pilgrims and, only lately, European, North American and other foreign tourists, especially since United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) has inscribed the colossal structures in the World Heritage List. So impressive are…
Source: International Orthodox Christian Charities Baltimore, MD (IOCC) — Thousands of South Sudanese families who fled the violence and bloodshed from their country’s civil war now face new hardships as refugees in Ethiopia. More than 196,000 refugees, of which nearly two-thirds are children, have endured months of living out in open fields with little shelter from the searing sun, torrential rains, and floods that washed away the few possessions they managed to cling to in flight. Stagnant water and poor sanitation created a breeding ground for cholera and other infectious diseases, and threaten the health of children already weakened by…
Source: Orthodox Christian Network By Seraphim Danckaert in The Sounding David Adams is an Australian explorer and documentarian who travels the world. In a series called “Journeys to the Ends of the Earth” he spends one episode in Ethiopia, investigating its ancient Christian culture and liturgical practices. In the segment embedded above, he has made his way to Lalibela, one of Ethiopia’s most distinctive holy sites, during the celebration of Christmas. [subscribe2]
Source: CNN From Errol Barnett, CNN Lalibela, Ethiopia (CNN) — It’s 4 o’clock on a Sunday morning when a trail of figures dressed in white emerges from the deep darkness. Quietly, the summoned crowd makes its way down a cluster of ancient structures as the slow beat from traditional skin drums beckons. It’s a common scene here in Lalibela, a small town in northern Ethiopia that’s home to 11 spectacular churches carved both inside and out from a single rock some 900 years ago. The chiseled creations have turned this mountain town into a place of pride and pilgrimage for worshipers…
Source: Daily Times [Pakistan] by I Razi Azmi In the light of the conspicuous pervasiveness of Christianity in Ethiopia, it is somewhat of a surprise to learn that one Ethiopian out of three is a Muslim The military coup of 1974 that overthrew the famine-stricken Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie unfolded slowly, just as famines do, after army officers bundled His Majesty out of the royal palace in the back seat of an old two-door VW Beatle and imprisoned him. To these officers with guns, it did not matter that he was not just an emperor, but also “King of Kings,…
Source: Neatorama by Miss Cellania A small church in Aksum, Ethiopia, claims to have the Ark of the Covenant. It is written in Ethiopia’s ancient book of kings that the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (Menelik, conceived during a royal one night stand) brought the Ark from Israel. It is now kept at The Chapel of the Tablet at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. Many historians are not convinced about this account of the Ark coming to Aksum. They believe that it is simply propaganda to get people to accept Menelik’s lineage as…