Prince Henry “Harry” of Wales and former U.S. actress Meghan Markle invited Bishop Michael Curry, the first African American to preside over the Episcopal Church and who defends same-sex marriage, to deliver a sermon at their wedding on Saturday.

“Presiding Bishop Curry, from Chicago Illinois, will travel to Windsor to take part in the Service,” Kensington Palace announced Saturday. “He will join The Dean of Windsor, The Rt. Revd. David Conner, who will conduct the Service. The Most Revd. and Rt. Hon. Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, will officiate as the couple make their marriage vows.”

The royal statement quoted Curry as saying, “The love that has brought and will bind Prince Harry and Ms. Meghan Markle together has its source and origin in God, and is the key to life and happiness. And so we celebrate and pray for them today.”

After the Episcopal Church voted to allow gay marriage in 2015, Archbishop Welby said the decision “will cause distress for some and have ramifications for the Anglican Communion as a whole, as well as for its ecumenical and interfaith resolutions.” In January 2016, the Anglican Communion decided to suspend the denomination for three years.

Click here to read more.
Source: Christian Post

Related

The political coalition of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr took an early lead in Iraq’s national elections in partial returns announced late Sunday by the Iraqi electoral commission.

An alliance of candidates linked to Iraq’s powerful Shiite paramilitary groups was in second. The alliance is headed by Hadi al-Amiri, a former minister of transport with close ties to Iran who became a senior commander of paramilitary fighters in the fight against the Islamic State extremist group.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi performed poorly across majority Shiite provinces that should have been his base of support.

The announcement came just over 24 hours after polls closed across the country amid record low voter turnout. It included full returns from only 10 of the country’s 19 provinces, including the provinces of Baghdad and Basra.

Members of the national election commission read out vote tallies for each candidate list in each of the 10 provinces on national TV. By the end of the announcement, al-Sadr’s list had the highest popular vote, followed by al-Amiri’s.

Seats in parliament will be allocated proportionately to coalitions once all votes are counted. The commission gave no indication on when further results would be announced.

Celebrations erupted in Baghdad’s Sadr City, an impoverished quarter that is home to some 3 million people and is named after the cleric’s late father, Ayatollah Mohammad Sadq al-Sadr. The younger al-Sadr campaigned on a cross-sectarian platform of fighting corruption and investing in services and struck a surprising alliance with the…

A new fissure emitting steam and lava spatter spurred Hawaii officials to call for more evacuations on Sunday as residents braced for an expected eruption from the Kilauea volcano.

The Hawaii County Civil Defense issued an alert after the fissure was discovered along a road west of a major highway on the Big Island. Residents on that road were told to evacuate, and two nearby community centers were serving as shelters for people and pets.

The new opening was still showing signs of activity Sunday afternoon.

Popping, exploding and sloshing sounds could be heard from the fissure as far as 1,500 yards (1,400 meters) away. But the behavior from the fissure was not terribly vigorous, the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said.

“The appearance of the fissures in the past couple of days does not change the overall picture or concern,” observatory scientist Steve Brantley said. “The amount of lava that has erupted from the fissure so far is very, very small.”

The fissure measures about 1,000 feet (300 meters) long. Brantley said it was emitting intermittent lava spatter but there was no substantial lava flow.

The fissures, ground deformation and abundant volcanic gases indicate eruptions on the eastern flank of Kilauea are likely to continue.

Most of the lava outbreaks have occurred in and around the Leilani Estates neighborhood, where molten rock has burst through the ground, destroying more than two dozen homes and resulting in evacuation orders for nearly 2,000 people.

The U.S. Geological Survey has reported nearly 20 active fissures. One that opened…

Investigators are following the trail of a 20-year-old Frenchman born in Chechnya who rampaged through a festive Paris neighborhood slashing passers-by with a knife, raising anew the specter of terrorism in France after less than two months of calm.

Using a knife, the man identified as Khamzat Azimov killed one person and wounded four others in a festive area near Paris’ old opera house. Police shot him to death as he charged them, witnesses said. Less than 24 hours later, investigators were questioning three people — his parents and a friend.

The Islamic State group quickly claimed responsibility for the Saturday night attack via its Aamaq news agency, saying Azimov was their “soldier” acting in response to the group’s calls for supporters to target members of the U.S.-led anti-IS military coalition, a stock response. France’s military has been active in the coalition since 2014.

On Sunday, Aamaq released a posthumous video said to show the attacker calling on Muslims in Europe to “take action in the land of disbelievers” if they can’t travel to the crumbling caliphate in Iraq and Syria, which has been pounded by coalition forces. The man said French citizens should pressure their government “if you want it (attacks) to end.”

SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi propaganda, obtained the video, which could not be independently authenticated. The young man’s face is covered, except for his eyes, with a black bandanna and the hood of his coat. The video was made outside amid trees and falling rain. French authorities had no comment.

Police detained…