Catholics celebrate the Eucharist in communion with the Pope, the local bishop, and all bishops, with the clergy and the entire people. If we attend to the words of the eucharistic prayer, our hearts and minds are stretched, we become more catholic in our concerns.When praying this part of the liturgy I try to be especially mindful of those places where Christians suffer persecution for their faith. Here the internet can be of enormous help in expanding our horizons beyond the parochial. Sandro Magister is a good source for information about the Church throughout the world. In his latest post he writes of attacks upon the small Catholic community in Pakistan:

They threw stones, burned homes, and pursued those fleeing, firing wildly. In the end, nine people were dead. Seven of them have the same last name, Hamid, and belong to the same family clan as Fr. Hussein Younis, a Franciscan. They include two children. Their only fault is that they were Christian.It took place in Pakistan, in Gojra, in the province of Faisalabad in eastern Punjab. There are 1.3 million Catholics in all of Pakistan, and the same number of Christians of other denominations, out of a population of 160 million, almost entirely Muslim. But the intolerance against this small, poor, peaceful minority has become a fact of life, exploding at times into bloody aggression.

Ongoing coverage of the Church in Asia can be found at UCAN (Union of Catholic Asian News).

Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, is a longtime Commonweal contributor.

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