by Mina Al-Oraibi | Joyce Karam -- nationalnews.com -- The US believes the “ball is in Iran’s court” regarding the resumption of the JCPOA deal, at a time when the prospects for the deal seems less positive than just a few months ago. Meanwhile, protests are expanding in Iran over the killing of Mahsa Amini. Speaking to The National in New York, where she participated in the US delegation to the UN General Assembly’s High Level Week, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs Barbara Leaf said that the US “was not looking for fights” with Iran. While there continues to be a diplomatic push to revive the nuclear deal with Iran, several Arab and western diplomats who spoke to The National in New York appeared less optimistic that an agreement could be reached..

Ms Leaf said she was "not going to speculate" over what options were available if the deal did not come through, but said "the package that's on the table is a sound one”. She said the talks were “stuck because Iranian leaders haven't made the decision to go back in, but they also have brought in extraneous issues and it's not just we who view them as extraneous, the collective group views them as extraneous”. Among those demands are additional safeguards that the US would not pull out of the deal in the future and the removal of the Islamic Republican Guard Corps from the list of terrorist organisations. Ms Leaf said: “we've done everything that we needed to do at this point. The ball is really in Iran's court."

As to whether the protests in Iran will make it harder for politicians to make a decision to rejoin the JCPOA, Ms Leaf said: “They were having trouble making the decision before it appeared." On the protests, she said that: “The brutal killing of this young woman was so shocking and it’s just unleashed this titanic wave of anger in Iran that is really quite striking. “I've talked to Iranian women over the past few years and they're really sick of being told what to do, about their appearance [and] how to live their lives. And clearly, a lot of lot of Iranian men feel the same way." However, she did not see the two issues as related. “I don't know if it affects how they think about the deal. The deal has its own logic."

NNA – Maronite Patriarch Beshara Boutros Rahi, warned on Sunday during Sunday Mass service against any attempt to disrupt the presidential elections …

By Ghalia Tamam -- Beirut, a picturesque coastal city known for its white capped mountains and booming night life is also home to some of the most beautiful heritage houses lining its inner neighborhoods. Nestled within Beirut’s oldest neighborhood, Abdel Wahab Al Ingiliz’s Street, are some of Beirut’s architectural gems including the 1890 Messarra House as well as the refurbished 1930s house transformed into the Albergo hotel. Unfortunately, not all of the city’s buildings stood the test of time. On August 4th 2020, a loud explosion thundered through the port of Beirut, killing at least 220 people while also destroying several of the city’s unique and precious buildings in its wake. The event saddened the hearts of its people and the Arab nation as a whole. To bring back a semblance of hope as well as a taste of Beirut prior to the 2020 incident, the Beirut Heritage Initiative (BHI) which launched after the events of the explosion collaborated with a maritime archaeology charity known as The Honor Frost Foundation to restore one of the buildings destroyed by the blast.

Located between Pasteur Street and Charles Helou Avenue, the Medawar 479 also known as The Blue House built in 1890 was hit badly by the explosion because of its proximity to the port. To restore it back to its old glory, the BHI reached out to the Honor Frost Foundation (HFF) to request funding for the restoration of several of the buildings hit by the blast including the Blue House. The HFF agreed to fund the Medawar 479 project and the renovation process started on November 2021. The entire project took over a year. On February 28th of this year, the HFF posted an update as well as a sneak peek of the house on Instagram, proudly stating that in over four months, they were able to complete 50% of the renovation process. Structural consolidation, as well as reconstruction of the pitched roof and rebuilding of the houses’ windows using Lebanese cedar wood, were some of the highlights of the restoration work.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Catholics in the United States are deeply divided over issues as disparate as LGBTQ inclusion, clerical sexual abuse and celebrating the liturgy, according to a summary of consultations carried out in dioceses across the country in recent months as part of Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality. “Participants felt this division as a profound sense of pain and anxiety,” the U.S. bishops wrote in a summary released Monday (Sept. 19) to the public after being sent to the Vatican last month. In 2021, Francis launched a global discussion, requiring parish churches and a host of other religious organizations to gather their congregations to talk about how they view the hierarchy and issues facing the church. The discussion would inform a summit of bishops at the Vatican scheduled for October 2023 on the topic “For a Synodal Church: Participation, Communion and Mission.”

Bishops’ conferences were tasked with collecting comments made at the parish level and sending them to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who produced a report for the Vatican. To collect the information from the over 66.8 million Catholics living in the United States, bishops divided the country into 15 administrative regions, including one representing the Eastern Churches. Contributions by Catholic organizations and individuals were grouped into a 16th region. A total of 290 documents were sent to the U.S. bishops to summarize. In a section of the document titled “Enduring wounds,” the bishops wrote that Catholics have brought divisions born in the political arena, including views on the Eucharist and the celebration of Mass, into the pews. A controversy about whether Catholic pro-choice politicians, including President Joe Biden, should be allowed to receive Communion at Mass has fractured Catholic communities in recent years and led U.S. Bishops to launch a $28 million three-year process to “restore” and “revive” the Eucharist.

Francis’ decision last year to strongly restrict the celebration of Mass in the Old Latin Rite, which the pontiff believed had become a rallying cause for conservative dissent, has led some Catholics to lament “the level of animosity” and “feeling judged” in the church, the USCCB report said. The polarization has also affected the church hierarchy, with the divisions among bishops — and sometimes between bishops and the pope — becoming “a source of grave scandal,” the summary stated. “This perceived lack of unity within the hierarchy seems to, in turn, justify division at the local level,” the document said. Connected to the topic of polarization was “marginalization.” The report emphasized calls by many Catholics for the church to become a more welcoming and open space. Two groups most marginalized, it suggested, were those who lack social or economic power and those whose lifestyle is condemned by church teaching.