The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has pledged his support for the Christian Communities of the Middle East. Writing in The Times today (Saturday 23rd December 2006), Dr Williams says that factors such as reaction to the war in Iraq, mistrust from surrounding commuities and security measures have combined to put intolerable pressure on Christians in countries across the region including Iraq, Iran, the Holy Land, Egypt and Turkey, to the point where many are migrating away from their homelands.

Each year, I promise myself I'm going to overcome my anxieties about Christmas, but then, like a steam roller, the dread flattens me. First, there are so many pressing Christmas obligations: cards to write, presents to wrap, cookies to bake and house to clean, tra la la!

God's blessings are around us everywhere as we celebrate the birth of the Infant Savior of Bethlehem! At Christmas, God the Father reveals his extraordinary love to us. Jesus is the Love of God who has personally entered into human history. Our experience of the sorrow and suffering of this world makes us long for God's love, and Jesus is that Love who heals all brokenness and sin.

Pope Benedict XVI spoke out against the legal recognition of unmarried couples during his Christmas address to Rome clergy. He also spoke of Europe and of his visits to Turkey and the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz earlier this year. The pope this week has also been urging to defend the spirit of Christmas against secular trends. For VOA, Sabina Castelfranco reports from Rome.

Muslims in Europe, amid a worsening climate of "Islamophobia," face discrimination in education, housing, and employment.

Saudi ambassador to Egypt Hisham Nazir has highlighted the great attention given by the Saudi authorities to the pilgrims to perform hajj.

A new study says politics - rather than religion - is at the heart of a growing divide between the West and the Muslim world. The yearlong study was carried out by the "Alliance of Civilizations", a group made up of leading political and religious figures. The findings are due to be discussed at a high-level summit in Rio de Janeiro next year. The initiative, spearheaded by Spain and Turkey, was launched at the United Nations in 2004, with the aim of countering radical Islam.

In Tver region (Russia, 100 miles north of Moscow) a priest, his three small kids and wife died in a fire in their house in strange circumstances. Local people and priests from neighboring towns think that this was not an accident. Several months ago, a priest Andrey Nikolaev was pleading for help through mass-media.

Pope Benedict and the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians Patriarch Bartholomew held a solemn prayer service together on Thursday and re-committed their Churches to the quest for unity to patch up a nearly 1,000-year-old schism.

On a traffic-choked boulevard in Ankara, in central Anatolia, the bleeping of car horns and the rattle of buses mix with the muezzin's airy call to evening prayer. Is this the sound of a new Europe? Perhaps. But for Pope Benedict XVI, who arrives in the city today for his first visit to a Muslim-majority country, that's a problem.

Contemporary Islam: Dynamics of Muslim Life, the first socio-scientific journal to focus on contemporary issues of Muslim life, will be launched by Springer in 2007.

Thousands of frightened Iraqi Christians are fleeing Iraq, after an escalation in anti-Christian violence.