c. 2003 Religion News Service

Update: Court Lifts Blockade on Rebel Greek Monastery

(RNS) The highest court in Greece has lifted an armed police blockade of a rebel monastery and postponed an eviction order until later this year, supporters of the monks said.

The Council of State last Wednesday (March 12) ordered police not to evict the monks from their 1,000-year-old home in northeastern Greece. Two days later, the court said the monks could come and go from the monastery and receive shipments of food, medicine and heating oil.

“We are pleased with the court’s intervention and are convinced that justice will ultimately prevail and the monks will be allowed to remain in their monastic home,” Ifigenia Kamtsidou, a lawyer for the monastery, said in a statement.

The monks at Esphigmenou monastery have vowed to die in the seaside complex rather than obey an eviction order from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of the world’s Orthodox Christians.

Bartholomew ordered the Esphigmenou monks out of the monastery after he labeled them “schismatic” last year, the latest salvo in an ongoing 30-year dispute. The monks disagree with Bartholomew’s relationships with the Vatican.

When the monks refused to leave, Bartholomew ordered all food shipments cut off and Greek police surrounded the monastery, with orders to expel anyone who left it. A 25-year-old monk died on Feb. 11 trying to avoid the police blockade.

Esphigmenou is one of Orthodoxy’s oldest monasteries, located on a peninsula with 20 other monasteries. Women and female livestock are banned from the grounds.

Its leader, Abbot Methodios, said, “We just want our regular life back.”

_ Kevin Eckstrom

Poll: Arab Opinions of United States at All-Time Low

(RNS) Arab public opinion of the United States has dropped to record low levels, even in advance of an impending U.S.-led war in Iraq, a new survey reports.

The poll, which was conducted in early March by the Arab American Institute/Zogby International, reported that since April 2002, opinions of the United States in the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt have dropped significantly.

Morocco and Jordan showed the most significant drop, with Morocco falling from 38 percent of those surveyed in 2002 reporting a “favorable” attitude toward the United States to only 9 percent in the 2003 poll.

Saudi Arabia reported the least favorable opinion of the United States, with only 3 percent of respondents expressing a favorable view. The United Arab Emirates and Egypt showed the highest opinion, with 11 percent each giving the “favorable” response.

In all five countries, where a total of 2,600 individuals were interviewed, the U.S. policy toward Iraq received only single-digit ratings of “favorable.” Nine out of 10 respondents opposed the current U.S. policy.

But the pollsters noted that “these numbers do not necessarily translate into support for the Iraqi regime,” since more than half of those surveyed in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates said the government of Iraq should comply with United Nations weapons inspectors. Forty-seven percent in Morocco, 23 percent in Jordan and 20 percent in Saudi Arabia agreed.

The poll had a margin of error of between plus or minus 3.8 percent and 5 percent.

_ Holly Lebowitz Rossi

World’s Largest Christian Bookstore Will Be Half Its Size

(RNS) The Christian bookstore that has been considered the world’s largest will soon be half its size.

The Potomac Adventist Book and Health and Food Store, which relocated to Silver Spring, Md., in March 2000, has had a square footage of 40,000 square feet. When it opened there, Christian retail experts said it was the largest of its kind, far exceeding the size of the average Christian bookstore of 3,550 square feet.

The decision to cut the retail space was made in January by the Potomac Conference, a division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church that includes Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Its board determined that “the market cannot sustain an operation of this magnitude.”

The store will be reduced to 20,000 square feet in late summer or early fall.

“What they are doing is basically dividing it into two equal stores and one side will be leased out to another tenant,” Lisa Myaing, general manager of the store, told Religion News Service.

The new tenant in the retail space located between a Petsmart and a Target is unknown.

“They will certainly not be any type of business that would be out of line with the church’s beliefs,” Myaing said. “We’re not going to have a bar in there.”

The reason for the reduction is that expenses have exceeded sales, Myaing said.

“Since coming in here, our sales have increased, our customer base has increased, but not to the level needed to cover the additional expenses we’ve taken on,” she said.

Myaing said the store will maintain on a smaller scale its range of products, which include Christian books and music as well as food and health-related items that fit the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s focus on healthy living.

“Certainly the changes are challenging,” said Myaing. “They’re tough. But we’re very committed to following the direction the board has voted and I believe that it will secure the future for us here.”

_ Adelle M. Banks

New Christian Best-Seller Lists Launched

(RNS) The CBA, the international trade association of Christian retailers, and the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association have launched almost two dozen new best-seller lists, shifting from book industry tradition.

The new lists, which began in March, feature 21 categories such as biblical studies, romance fiction, relationships, parenting and devotionals. In addition, there will be an overall top 50 list, ranking top-selling books.

“Consumers do not come into stores asking to see the latest best-selling hardcover or paperback book,” said Bill Anderson, president of CBA, in a statement. “They ask for books on marriage, or Bible study helps or books for spiritual growth.”

The new lists, compiled by using STATS _ Sales Tracking Analysis Trends Summary _ data, will focus primarily on topical category rather than book format. The charts will be based on sales in more than 900 Christian retail stores nationwide.

Kelly Gallagher, vice president of ECPA, said he hopes the top 50 list will “provide greater national exposure to what is really catching on in the marketplace.”

The sponsoring organizations of the new lists intend to syndicate them through a variety of outlets, including magazines, newspapers and Web sites.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Anglican Blair Reportedly Given Communion by the Pope

VATICAN CITY (RNS) In a rare relaxation of Roman Catholic rules, Pope John Paul II reportedly gave communion to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, an Anglican, during a Mass in the papal chapel last month.

Because both Blair’s visit and the Mass were private, Vatican officials have refused to discuss the report, which has circulated in Rome for several weeks and appears on the front page of the current edition of the Church of England’s Church Times.

Vatican sources said they believed John Paul has given communion to visiting Lutheran leaders and representatives of the World Council of Churches, but they said such exemptions as extremely rare.

Publication of the report came as Vatican officials confirmed John Paul will issue an encyclical letter on the Eucharist next month in order to reassert its sacred nature. An encyclical is the highest form of papal teaching.

The encyclical, the 14th John Paul has written in his 24 years as Roman Catholic pontiff, will deal in part with differences over the real vs. symbolic presence of the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, which prevent intercommunion between Catholics and members of other Christian faiths.

The document is expected to appear on Holy Thursday (April 17), the day on which the church commemorates Jesus’ institution of the Eucharist and the ministerial priesthood at the Last Supper.

John Paul began work on the encyclical last spring, prompted by concern over such developments as a move in Germany for Lutherans and Catholics to share communion, the distribution of communion in Austria by women ordained to the priesthood outside the church and a general trend toward group rather than individual confession.

Blair attended Sunday Mass in the pope’s chapel on Feb. 22, the day after his audience with John Paul to talk about the Iraq crisis. With him were his wife, Cherie, and three of their four children, Euan, 19, Kathryn, 15, and Leo, 2, who are Catholic.

The prime minister caused controversy in the past for taking communion when attending Mass with his family, and English newspapers have speculated he will convert to Catholicism when he leaves office.

“If the pope did give Mr. Blair communion, I find it a somewhat surprising decision, but since the Anglican Communion believes that intercommunion is a way of churches growing into unity, we are delighted,” said Bishop Richard Garrard, director of the Anglican Center.

_ Peggy Polk

Irish Catholic Bishops Express Opposition to Iraq War

(UNDATED) Ireland’s Roman Catholic bishops have warned in the strongest possible terms against military action against Iraq.

In a March 14 statement, the bishops quoted Pope John Paul II’s judgment that war is “not always inevitable” but is “always a defeat for humanity.”

“The resort to war on Iraq would indeed be a defeat for humanity and we would all be greatly diminished by it,” the Irish bishops said.

They said they are heartened by the stance taken by the Irish government at the United Nations to uphold that body’s role and the primacy of international law. They noted the U.N. Charter requires all states to refrain from the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political integrity of any state.”

“There is a danger now that this key requirement of international peace and security will be put aside as the option of a pre-emptive war is being actively considered,” the bishops said.

The bishops also expressed concern about the humanitarian disaster that could befall Iraq in the event of war and urged Irish Catholics to be as generous as possible in contributing to all organizations involved in trying to provide the aid that would be needed.

_ Robert Nowell

Russian Religious Delegation Cuts Short Baghdad Trip

MOSCOW (RNS) Fearful that war is imminent, a delegation of Russian religious leaders on a last-minute peace mission to Baghdad aborted their trip Tuesday (March 18) and flew back to the Russian capital.

The delegation, which included Russia’s supreme mufti, a Russian Orthodox bishop and a leading Buddhist politician, spent only a day in the Iraqi capital before returning to Moscow on a charter plane.

“They wanted to show their support for the Iraqi people and to draw attention to the fact that a peaceful solution can be found,” said Yury Ryabykh, of the Russian Orthodox Church’s department of external church relations.

The religious leaders, accompanied by the Iraqi ambassador to Russia, were to have met in Baghdad with government officials, as well as Iraqi Muslim and Christian clerics. Ryabykh said it was not clear late Tuesday which, if any, meetings had taken place.

By including nine muftis from Russia and neighboring Belarus as well as three Russian Orthodox clergy, the delegation hoped to “show that Muslims and Christians can live peacefully together and that this conflict (in Iraq) is not religious,” Ryabykh said.

The delegation left on Monday, the same day that Patriarch Alexy II, head of the 80-million member Russian Orthodox Church, made his first comprehensive plea for peace and appeal to God to “protect the biblical soil of Iraq against the fire of war.”

_ Frank Brown

Quote of the Day: Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold

(RNS) “Our national spirit is being slowly poisoned. This may be Osama bin Laden’s greatest triumph.”

_ Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold, in a March 13 statement on the impending war with Iraq.

DEA END RNS