Israeli planes killed a Hezbollah commander and three fighters overnight. The Shia group responded firing scores of rockets towards the Golan and Tiberias. Meanwhile, in an ecumenical ceremony held in Bkerké, Fr Michel Jalakh became bishop; he is the first Maronite to hold the post of secretary general of the Dicastery of Oriental Churches, an important role in the Vatican. Despite being at loggerheads with Patriarch al-Rahi, Hezbollah praises the new Lebanese prelate.
Today's news: South Korean doctors on strike on 18 June against government reform; Economic crisis and joblessness cause growing school dropout in Laos; At least seven security men killed in an explosion in Pakistan; Armenian archbishop calls for street protest against government territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.
Despite denials by the Jewish State, the use in raids against Hezbollah, especially against civilian targets and farmland, has been documented by pro-human rights associations and observers on the ground. The Land of the Cedars is ready to lodge a complaint with the United Nations. Amnesty International speaks of ‘appalling’ attacks that cause serious damage to the environment.
The celebrations in Zalhé, Christian centre of the Bekaa, an opportunity to return to talk about the crisis that has hit the country. For Christians (and non-Christians) in Lebanon, the presidential vacuum (since October 20222) is worse than the plague. It compromises the ‘political entity’ itself, as the Greek Catholic archbishop emphasises. The rediscovery of faith against the trend towards secularisation.
Today's news: Poverty in Lebanon tripled in a decade; Summit between leaders of South Korea, China and Japan on 26-27 May in Seoul, first trilateral talks in four years; Heavy pre-monsoon rains claim seven victims in Kerala; A centuries-old Armenian church reopens in Zakho, Iraq; Russian local government offers children a prize trip to ‘fascinating’ North Korea.
Eight Franciscans and three Maronite brothers were killed together in hatred of the faith in the Bab-Touma neighbourhood in 1860. They symbolise the "ecumenism of blood" that Christians have experienced in the Middle East in the recent past. The pontiff also approved the decrees for the canonisation of 15-year-old Carlo Acutis and Fr Giuseppe Allamano, founder of the Consolata missionaries.
