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[Religion News Service] Although All Saints Anglican Cathedral in Khartoum, Sudan, suffered huge damage in the two-year battle for the Sudanese capital, the country’s archbishop is relieved the structure was never bombed. Speaking on April 1, days after the Sudanese Armed Forces, the national army, had recaptured the city from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, Ezekiel Kondo, archbishop of the Province of the Episcopal Anglican Church of Sudan, told Religion News Service he had received information about the state of the cathedral and the damage it had sustained. “The damage is huge. Archbishop’s residence, dean’s house, and offices are all destroyed and looted. Praise God the building is not bombed,” Kondo, 68, told RNS from Port Sudan, in eastern Sudan, where he had been forced to flee two years earlier. “It will cost millions of dollars to repair the church.” According to the archbishop, Christians are yet to return to the cathedral because the army has not declared the area safe. “There may be land mines left behind by the paramilitary. Basic services such as water and electricity have not been restored,” said Kondo. On March 26, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces, announced that his forces had taken the city back from Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo and the Rapid Support Forces, raising hopes that the bloody civil war between the two factions of the military government might move on from the area. However, a month earlier, in Nairobi, Kenya, the Rapid Support Forces and allies had announced plans to form a parallel government. The Sudanese Armed Forces now controls the north and the east, while the Rapid Support Forces controls the south and the expansive Darfur region in the West, creating an impression of a split in Africa’s third largest country. Dagalo is a former leader of the Janjaweed, a group of Arab militias widely accused of committing mass atrocities in the Darfur region, recognized by the United Nations as genocide in 2004. Like other churches and some mosques, All Saints has been caught in the fight for control of Khartoum and northeastern Sudan. On April 15, 2023, Kondo, along with other church leaders and their families, had been in the cathedral preparing for the Sunday service when the paramilitary seized the church building and turned it into a military base. This past September, the archbishop told RNS the paramilitary had turned the cathedral compound into a graveyard, chopping pews for use as firewood. In Sudan, an estimated 5% of the 50 million population are Christians. The rest, 95%, are Sunni Muslims. While the war has forced the shutting of an estimated 165 churches, some mosques have also been targets. On March 24, the paramilitary allegedly shelled a mosque in Khartoum, killing at least five people and injuring dozens of others. According to reports, the militaries have also arrested numerous Muslim clerics who have advocated for peace. At least 12 mosques in Khartoum, El Fasher and El Geneina have been affected. “The religious sites and the clerics are being caught in the crossfire in a war between two generals who are Muslims. It is not a religious war,” said Sheikh Abdullah Kheir, an imam and a senior university lecturer in various Kenyan universities. “When you look at what is happening, it is not only Christians who are suffering, but Muslims too. I have seen Muslim women being bombed as they try to flee.” Church sources indicate that St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in Khartoum has also been badly damaged, with the interior and exterior affected. However, the structure is still standing. The 1908 cathedral, near the El Mek Nimir Bridge, is the seat of Archbishop Michael Didi Adgum Mangoria of Khartoum. Mangoria is also living in Port Sudan after having been forced out by the war. “The building is intact, but there are no benches in the sitting area. Instead, there is rubbish,” said the Rev. John Gbemboyo Joseph Mbikoyezu, the coordinator of the South Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference. Despite persistent calls by church leaders for peace, there is no ceasefire agreement in sight, and the two generals are promising to fight on. The exact death toll in the Sudan conflict is still unknown, but organizations have put the figure between 61,000 and 150,000 people. The conflict has displaced an estimated 12 million people and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, according to the U.N.

Despite multiple court orders, the Trump administration’s refugee ban and funding freeze remain largely in place. Thousands of refugees have been left stranded abroad, often in dangerous conditions without basic support. Refugees who were recently resettled across the United States – those who finally found a safe place to call home after years of lengthy screening and vetting – are ... Read More

Archbishop Ioannis of Tirana, Durrës, and All Albania, the newly elected primate of the Orthodox Church of Albania, was enthroned on 29 March in the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Tirana.

[Episcopal News Service] Episcopal clergy and lay leaders of Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage are gathered in Kansas City, Missouri, to share their hopes and desires for The Episcopal Church at the annual AAPI Clergy and Lay Leadership Retreat. The Episcopal Church’s Asiamerica Ministries organized the April 2-4 retreat, underway at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in the Diocese of West Missouri. Fifty-seven people of East Asian, South Asian and Pacific Islander descent came from across the continental United States, Hawai‘i and Guam to attend the retreat. This year’s theme is “Sharing Our Stories, Revealing Dreams, Living in Hope.” The Rev. Jo Ann Lagman, the church’s missioner for Asiamerica Ministries, told Episcopal News Service before the retreat started that she was most looking forward to the camaraderie. “The kinship, the time to be together and to be with, in a sense, my chosen family … part of my life story has some similarities with theirs, and I’m really looking forward to sharing that,” said Lagman, who is of Philippine descent. “I’m looking forward to the space to think about my own stories and dream with my community as their missioner.” The retreat began April 2 with a morning Eucharist celebrated by West Missouri Bishop Provisional Diane M. Jardine Bruce. Her successor, Bishop-elect Amy Dafler Meaux, also attended. New York Bishop Suffragan Allen K. Shin, who is Korean American, preached. Shin’s sermon focused on the importance of storytelling, especially now amid government entities’ “whitewashing” of U.S. history in response to President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion. “Asians have been on this land for 400 years and have been members of The Episcopal Church for 150 years, yet our stories are too often silenced in the story of this nation and in the story of this church. When AAPI stories are included by the dominant culture, it’s often with performative caricatures or for scapegoating for plagues. Our stories are often discarded as the stories of inconsequential outsiders who do not belong here,” Shin said in his sermon, which he provided to ENS. “AAPI people are not a monolithic group with a single stereotypical story and identity. We embody a rich tapestry of diverse stories and experiences, and individually each of us also embodies diversity and intersectionality of cultural experiences and identities.” Shin and Bruce formed the first iteration of the retreat in 2017 in Los Angeles, California, where Bruce then served as bishop suffragan. Interest and participation quickly germinated, with retreat and churchwide Asian ministries continuing to grow annually. “I think one of the hallmarks of this gathering is that people make friends in different parts of the country, and when they come up against something, those friendships are what sustain them,” Bruce told ENS in a phone interview. “There’s something to be said about having somebody that has a lot of your same life experiences. … If there’s a difficulty in church or elsewhere, it’s somebody that you can talk to who can relate to what you’re going through.” Bruce said AAPI ministries are growing in the Diocese of West Missouri. The AAPI population is also growing throughout the Kansas City metropolitan area, which encompasses 14 counties alongside the Missouri-Kansas border, and is the fastest-growing demographic in the United States. On the first day, attendees participated in icebreaker activities, including “AAPI Episcopal Bingo.” During the game, players filled out blank squares on a bingo card each time they could answer a question that highlighted AAPI Episcopal experiences, such as, “Did your parents or grandparents recycle every empty container around?” or “Did you grow up cradle Episcopalian?” or “Have you eaten Spam in the last month?” (Spam – canned salty pork produced by Austin, Minnesota-based Hormel Foods – is a staple ingredient in several AAPI cuisines.) After filling out the squares, participants compared them to learn which answers they had in common. Adrienne Elliott, program coordinator for Multicultural Ministries in the Seattle, Washington-based Diocese of Olympia and a member of the retreat’s planning team, told ENS that AAPI Episcopal Bingo is meant to be both entertaining and a way for retreat participants to learn what they have in common despite coming from different cultural backgrounds under the wider AAPI umbrella. “[AAPI Episcopal Bingo] is pretty funny and a really great way to get people out of their shell and laughing. It’s not often that we get to be in a space where it is AAPI and Episcopalian, and to have that experience with other people is really, really special,” said Elliott, who is half Japanese. “To be able to connect with so many different people from all over the church is a gift and something that I look forward to every year.” While professional networking is a goal, the retreat is designed to foster fellowship. Programming is discussion- and storytelling-based, with participants welcomed to express themselves through speaking, music or any way that best suits them. Rachel Ambasing is the Diocese of San Diego’s missioner for community, vitality and diversity and the retreat’s programming lead. She told ENS that, rather than have a traditional keynote speaker, the retreat offers all participants a chance to speak. “Sometimes it can feel like we as leaders might feel pressure to assimilate to somebody else’s model of leadership, when each of us in our own backgrounds have all been formed in different ways by our communities – created in the image of God, shaped by different cultural traditions, with different gifts that we might not really be able to see in The Episcopal Church,” said Ambasing, a cradle Episcopalian who is of Igorot Philippine and Chinese descent. “The deeper we can embrace those gifts and those stories, the richer everyone in The Episcopal Church would be.” Everyone ENS spoke to said they were especially excited to listen to the Rev. KyungJa “KJ” Oh, who in 2002 became the first Korean American woman ordained in The Episcopal Church, speak at the […]

The documents below are related to the Business Meeting at the 2025 Biennial Mission Summit event. The Business Meeting will be held at 10:00 AM on Sunday, July 6, 2025. The full Biennial Mission Summit dates are July 3-6, 2025. Call to Meeting – Delegates of Biennial Meeting Call to Meeting – Board of General […]

The post 2025 Biennial Mission Summit Delegate Information appeared first on ABCUSA.

[Episcopal News Service] Imagine attending an Episcopal worship service on Sunday, sitting down in one of the pews and facing ahead to see a 20-foot representation of the moon levitating over the altar. No imagination will be required at Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, New York. Starting April 11, the cathedral will welcome the traveling art installation “Museum of the Moon,” which features high-resolution NASA images of the moon displayed on a giant 3D canvas. The illuminated sphere will be suspended in the nave through May 4 as part of the cathedral’s nearly monthlong “Moon as Sacred Mirror” series of programming. The centerpiece exhibit was created by British artist Luke Jerram, who has installed “Museum of the Moon” at a variety of settings and locations around the world, from India to England to the West Bank. “Over its lifetime, the ‘Museum of the Moon’ will be presented in a number of different ways both indoors and outdoors, so altering the experience and interpretation of the artwork,” Jerram says on the installation’s website. The Cathedral of the Incarnation will be the first house of worship in the United States to host the artwork. “We are honored to welcome this extraordinary installation to our cathedral,” the Very Rev. Michael Sniffen, the cathedral’s dean, said in a Diocese of Long Island news release. “The ‘Moon as Sacred Mirror’ program reflects our mission as Long Island’s center for prayer, learning, culture, and the arts, inviting all to engage with the intersection of faith and creativity.” The coming weeks of programming centered on Jerram’s lunar artwork will include guided tours, a gala fundraiser, a Pink Floyd tribute concert (with songs from the band’s blockbuster 1973 album, “The Dark Side of the Moon”), yoga sessions, academic lectures with scholars from Adelphi University and an additional art exhibition presented by Trinity Community Arts Center. The cathedral’s online invitation describes Jerram’s installation as “a powerful theological and cultural focal point, bridging sacred and secular understandings of existence.” “This installation is more than an artwork—it’s a bridge between the sacred and the celestial,” Sniffen said. “We invite the entire community to witness this remarkable experience, where art, faith and wonder unite.”

United Methodists remember Bishop Hans Växby as a servant leader who helped rebuild the church in Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Voting has ended for episcopal elections in the Northern Europe and Eurasia Central Conference. UM News tracked the balloting as it happened and has coverage.

The United Church is pleased to share our new 2023 and 2024 Sustainability Report: Deep Roots, Bold Action, Daring Decisions.

Southeastern Jurisdiction brings Asian American ministers together for fellowship, resources and ministerial support.