Rev Roland Parson, 72, said on 10^th November, police offers told him he could not show his ‘Blood of Jesus Christ’ banner, which was fixed with rope to the side of his preaching stand.

Rev Parsons said two police officers informed him that he was violating the Royal Parks regulations banning the display of printed material. However, he said officers didn’t do anything about other large banners displayed in the area.

 “How can these words be a crime?’ Parsons told The Mail on Sunday. “There is nothing inflammatory or disrespectful about them.”

“I have come to Hyde Park at least once a month for 20 years to preach with my banner. I have never before been stopped by police but now suddenly I am told it is a crime.

“Speakers’ Corner is the bastion of free speech and this is my calling from God. Yet neither seems to matter to the authorities.”

Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park is a traditional site area where open-air public speaking, debate, and discussion are allowed.

The Mail on Sunday said Metropolitan Police confirmed officers “spoke to a man who had attached a large banner to infrastructure in the park in contravention of regulations. He was asked to remove the banner, which he did.”

Rev Parsons has said he will take the matter to court.

Mike Phillips, legal adviser to Christian Concern, said:…

The project, to mark 2020 Year of Cathedrals, Year of Pilgrimage, will ensure there is a pilgrimage route for every Church of England cathedral taking in established wayfarer routes, other places of faith, spiritual pathways and lesser known pilgrim ways.

Each cathedral will have a route available to its visitors, offering one day options to two weeks and beyond in some cases.

Most routes, such as the 35-mile St Alban Pilgrim Way from St Paul’s Cathedral that opened in June, offer “green” public transport options to make them more environmentally sustainable.

Dr Guy Hayward of the British Pilgrimage Trust was inspired to do the project as 2020 brings together a number of individual cathedral anniversaries, from the 850th anniversary of Becket at Canterbury to the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Coventry]

Next year also see a number of new pilgrimage routes opened and established including the Northern Saints Trails that explores the North East as the Christian crossroads of the British Isles.

Dr Howard said: “This project is about creating a whole new way of engaging with cathedrals for everyone, whether or not they have been into a cathedral before.

“It turns cathedrals into more than just tourist places by turning tourists into visitors and visitors into pilgrims.

“And cathedrals are, in some way, holy magnets: they draw you towards them, most…

According to Catholic aid charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), demonstrators recently broke into the Church of the Assumption in Santiago  and set fire to pews, statues and other sacred images, many of which were dragged out of the church to make barricades against police.

The church was also covered in satanic imagery and graffiti.

Following the attack, the parish priest, Fr Pedro Narbona, told parishioners “not to slip into the cycle of hatred that can only end up poisoning the souls”.

He added: “The Church is built not so much out of physical materials, but rather of the living stones, which we [all] are… We are the living stones and this is the fundamental truth.”

The attack on the Church of the Assumption, part of a spate of attacks on churches in Chile, came during protests sparked by the government of President Sebastian Pinera’s decision to increase the prices of subway tickets.

ACN said a week earlier, on 1^st November, there was another attempted attack on the Church of the Assumption but Fr Pedro called the fire brigade in time.

The charity added that The Church of Vera Cruz, Santiago, Vilparaiso Cathedral, and the parish of Saint Teresa of the Andes in Villa Alfredo Lorca, Punta Arenas, were also attacked over the past few weeks.

Maria Covarrubias, National Director ACN (Chile), said the charity is deeply concerned at spike in violence…

Although 17^th November has been set aside for Christians in the UK and Ireland to pray for persecuted Christians, people are being urged to set aside the whole month for prayer.

Some 80 per cent of those persecuted for their faith around the world today are Christians, and the indications are that violence against Christians is on the rise, according to a report commissioned by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office from the Bishop of Truro.

Release International said part of the reason it chose to focus on Pakistan for this year’s IDOP is because “believers face discrimination in education, employment and the law”.

The charity added: “Most Christians in Pakistan are poor, illiterate and vulnerable to abuse, especially young women and girls. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have been used to make false allegations against Christians, often to settle personal vendettas.”

Release International has helped Christians who have been falsely accused of blasphemy and given support to families of prisoners like Asia Bibi, a Pakistani mother who spent 10 years in jail on charges that were later thrown out by the Supreme Court.

Speaking recently from Canada, the 54-year-old called on Christians everywhere to remember others behind bars.

She said in a video posted on YouTube: “I Asia Bibi, believe in Jesus. My belief is strong. I never let my belief weaken.

“Stay true to your…

In a Facebook post the US evangelist shared an article about one of West’s Sunday Service’s and said he was “thrilled to read about Kanye West using his testimony of what God has done in his life to point thousands of people to Jesus Christ”.

He said he was glad that the services are “reaching a whole new group of people”.

“Kanye is doing what he believes, even if there are sceptics and even though it goes against the liberal beliefs of most in the entertainment industry,” Rev Graham added.

“Pray for Kanye—there will be many temptations and the devil will try to discourage, distract, and even destroy him. Pray that he will keep his eyes focused on Jesus, and that God would guide and protect him. God bless you, Kanye—we’re praying for you.”

The rapper started hosting Sunday Services earlier this year.  The venue and time for the services are only announced with a few days’ notice, but are usually held in Los Angeles at “The Forum”.

The service includes worship with West’s gospel choir, a preacher sharing the message of salvation, and an altar call.

West is due to attend Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas on Sunday morning. It’s been reported his choir will perform at an evening service.

The rapper released his first Christian album Jesus is King last month. The album has broken records on Billboard charts and has…

Most Rev Thabo Makgoba and other church leaders asked some of the migrants to leave Cape Town’s Methodist Church on Friday due to overcrowding.

The migrants, mostly from other African countries, were staging a sit-in in the church after being forced to leave the offices of the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) in Cape Town two weeks prior.

The crowd demanded that they be resettled in another country and be given refugee status as they don’t feel safe in South Africa due to a recent spike in xenophobic violence.

JP Balous, a man speaking on behalf of the refugees told a local news channel that they have “been treated like rubbish”.

“We are human beings, we came here to seek refuge… The human rights commission is actually the human rights abuse in South Africa,” he said.

Video aired by broadcaster eNCA showed a fight breaking out in the church, injuring Archbishop Thabo and South Africa’s Human Rights Commissioner Chris Nissen.

Anglican Archbishop Thabo Makgoba says he bears no ill-feelings to refugees who attacked him in Cape Town today. #Refugees #Upfront with @FaithMangope Courtesy #DStv403 pic.twitter.com/vsVt2WQF6g

— eNCA (@eNCA) November 15, 2019

Witnesses said the fight started after a Congolese church leader had the microphone snatched out of his hand and was beaten up by an angry crowd.

“They started throwing papers at me when I was trying to calm them…

A Church tribunal found that Rev Keith Hanson, a mission development vicar of the Maltby Team Ministry and of Thurcroft St Simon and St Jude in South Yorkshire, had sex with the woman three times.

It was revealed in a hearing by the Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal for the Diocese of Sheffield that Hanson had sent the woman explicit text messages after they met in 2017.

He had been communicating with her via e-mail, Facebook and WhatsApp before visiting her house to have intimate relations with her.

The tribunal heard that in the messages he sent her, he made references to be “isolated and lonely”.

It also heard that when he ended the relationship with the woman, he told her no one would believe her if she reported it because of her mental history.

Hanson did not appear at the tribunal ruling, claiming he was “mentally unwell” but gave evidence of prescriptions and data sheets describing the risks of sexual dysfunction.

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The website that allows people to give money directly to others. Managed through a network of churches and local charities called “advocates”, the goal of the charity is to get 100 per cent of donations quickly to those in need.

Since its foundation in 2010, the national charity has increased its activity and reach to over 400 local “advocates” based around the U.K.

An advocate meets with individuals to determine their need and post requests on the website.

These local advocates reach out to many in need, from all walks of life; from families in debt who need to be able to buy a bed for their child, to a single person on low income who needs oil to heat their home, travel costs for an asylum seeker to attend appointments, or a homeless man who desperately needs even a small deposit to get off the streets and into a hostel.

The 20,000th request was for petrol costs for a grandmother in Oxford who had begun to care for her granddaughter full-time and was unable to cope with all the extra expenses.

The grandmother said: “Thank you for the money you raised for me- it’s been such a help as getting her school is involving driving 25 miles a day.  £120 to help with petrol costs is making such a difference.”

The charity said it’s seen much organic growth through its advocates, but also its donors, who have enabled Acts 435 to double the amount of people helped in…

It prompted Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro to close St Mark’s Square and call for more donations for repairs just three days after the Italian lagoon city suffered its worst flooding in 50 years.

The high tide peaked at five feet above sea level just before noon on Friday, flooding most of the historic World Heritage city’s centre.

A senior official in charge of St Mark’s basilica has called for the monument to be surrounded with a 2 metre flood wall as the building was threatened with flood waters.

Carlo Alberto Tesserin, the head of the board responsible for the church said: “The weather is changing and there is no time to waste, we must save this place.”

Mayor Brugnaro said the damage is estimated at hundreds of millions of euros and blamed climate change for the “dramatic situation”.

He also called for the speedy completion of the city’s long-delayed Moses flood defence project.

Carabinieri officers from the corps’ world-renowned and highly trained squad of art experts were being deployed to map damage to art treasures, a job that is expected to take some time.

Mosaics were covered with corrosive saltwater and marble panels were bugling out as the water expanded the brickwork behind the wall.  

“A wall is the way to save all this unless Venice’s flood barrier is completed and works,” Mr Tesserin said.

Many people were rising to the challenge of saving…