Story highlights Cuban Catholics start building their first churches since 1959 Religious believers had been seen as suspicious under the Castro regime The new churches are desperately needed, Cuban Catholics say

But in the isolated town of Sandino, Cuba's first Catholic church since the 1959 revolution took power is set to be built.

"There is money to start, there is the construction material to start, there are the permissions to start, so everything is ready," said Bishop Jorge Enrique Serpa Prez, who oversees the diocese where the new church will be built.

The Sandino church has been 56 years in the making, ever since Fidel Castro took power and Cuba became an officially atheist state.

Religious people fell under suspicion by the new revolutionary government, but none more so than those who belonged to the Catholic Church, which was seen as being overly sympathetic to the Batista regime that Castro had driven from power.

In the first years of the revolution, thousands of Catholic priests were jailed or forced into exile, and church property, including the Jesuit school that Castro attended, was seized by the Cuban government.

Only with the visit in 1998 of Pope John Paul II to the island did relations between the Cuban government and Catholic Church begin to thaw. Christmas again became a national holiday, and Cubans faced less official discrimination for practicing their faiths.

In December, Cuban President Raul Castro thanked Pope Francis for his role in the secret talks that led to a prisoner swap between Cuba and the United States and the start of negotiations to restore full diplomatic relations.

In 2015, church officials said requests to build new churches that had long been ensnared in red tape began to receive government approval.

While church officials said several new Catholic houses of worship are in the works, the first will be built in Sandino, a remote town at the end of a pothole-cratered road in Cuba's westernmost province.

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Cubans start building their first churches since 1959

SANDINO, CUBA (CNN) - Pope Francis' role in brokering improved U.S.-Cuban relations has bolstered the influence of the Catholic Church in Cuba.

And for the first time since the Cuban Revolution, Catholics have received permission to build a new church on the island.

Father Cirilo Castro holds mass in a converted garage. There are no walls and just a tin roof.

It doesn't always have enough chairs, but it is the closest thing the isolated Cuban town of Sandino has ever had to a Catholic Church. Soon, construction will begin on the first church to be built in Cuba in more than 56 years - since the Cuban Revolution seized control of the island.

"I hope the church doesn't stay within these four walls - that it will go farther than that," Castro said. "That with the building of the new church there will be more people of faith."

The only thing at the site now was the building's cornerstone. Castro said it would hold 200 people when completed.

The new church represents a mending of relations between the Catholic Church and Cuban government. In the first years of the revolution, the government seized church property and expelled thousands of priests from the country.

The church has added significance for the town's residents.

"Sandino is an isolated town deep in the countryside," Patrick Oppmann said. "Here is where in the early 1960s people considered enemies of Fidel Castro's revolution were sent by the government to live in eternal exile. For many, life here was nothing short of a punishment."

Digna Martinez's family were among the hundreds, perhaps thousands, who in the early '60s were considered to be opponents of the Cuban regime.

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Cubans eye first Catholic church since revolution

Friday, January 30, 2015 - 4:13pm

SANDINO, Cuba (CNN) A neglected, weed-strewn field in a small Cuban town where there are more horses than cars seems an unlikely setting for a major shift in government policy.

But in the isolated town of Sandino, Cuba's first Catholic church since the 1959 revolution took power is set to be built.

"There is money to start, there (is) the construction material to start, there are the permissions to start, so everything is ready," said Bishop Jorge Enrique Serpa Prez, who oversees the diocese where the new church will be built.

The Sandino church has been 56 years in the making, ever since Fidel Castro took power and Cuba became an officially atheist state.

Religious people fell under suspicion by the new revolutionary government, but none more so than those who belonged to the Catholic Church, which was seen as being overly sympathetic to the Batista regime that Castro had driven from power.

In the first years of the revolution, thousands of Catholic priests were jailed or forced into exile, and church property, including the Jesuit school that Castro attended, was seized by the Cuban government.

Only with the visit in 1998 of Pope John Paul II to the island did relations between the Cuban government and Catholic Church begin to thaw. Christmas again became a national holiday, and Cubans faced less official discrimination for practicing their faiths.

In December, Cuban President Raul Castro thanked Pope Francis for his role in the secret talks that led to a prisoner swap between Cuba and the United States and the start of negotiations to restore full diplomatic relations.

In 2015, church officials said requests to build new churches that had long been ensnared in red tape began to receive government approval.

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Cuba to build first new Catholic church since Castro

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Egyptian President Al-Sisi has committed to tackling religious intolerance throughout Egypt

Egyptian Christians are enjoying greater freedoms under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a spokesman for the country's Catholic Church, has said.

Speaking to AsiaNews, Father Rafic Greiche said the government is committed to speeding up the application process for the construction of new churches; something that has been made difficult for decades.

"A permit has already been granted for the construction of a church in New Cairo and two in Upper Egypt," he said.

"These applications date back to 8-10 years ago. Others go back 15 years ago and have not received any answer."

The current law in Egypt states that churches cannot be built near schools, villages, railways, residential areas, government offices and canals, among other stipulations. "Entire cities and villages in the countryside and in Upper Egypt don't have a single church," Safwat al-Bayadi, the head of the Evangelical Church in Egypt, told Al-Monitor last year.

Al-Sisi has pledged to change this, however, and church representatives were asked to draft a more inclusive bill.

"The project is almost ready. In the new constitution there is a paragraph that requires the new parliament - which will sit after elections in March - to pass the law within a year," Fr Greiche said.

"This means that by March 2016, we will have a law on new church construction without the current hassles."

Fr Greiche also said that the government wants to "value the Christian marriage and recognise it civilly". In the past, the spokesman has insisted that "life is much better than the year when the Muslim Brotherhood was in power...the country is becoming more confident and, in a sense, one can say that the 'Egypt' has found itself.

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Life for Christians improving in Egypt, says Catholic leader

Is it blasphemous or humorous?

Praise the loft, reads a slogan on a tall sign erected outside a church-turned-lofts development that leaves some Junction Triangle residents in a righteous anger.

Daniel Masih is calling for developers to remove the sign from the Union Lofts construction site and to strip the slogan from their website. He started a petition two weeks ago. It now has 33 signatures, he said.

The slogan is in bad taste, said Masih, calling it blasphemous.

Masih, who grew up Catholic in the area, said his mother alerted him to the sign earlier this month.

It made my mom very upset and I couldnt live with myself if I didnt do something, he said. If I was the marketing person for that I would definitely be ashamed.

The project by Windmill Development Group, Cornerstone Lofts Ltd. and One Development is on the corner of Perth and Wallace Aves., an increasingly gentrified neighbourhood.

Its a pun. Its a joke, said Alex Speigel, head of Windmill Development Groups Toronto office. I think people should lighten up.

He said no one involved in the project is anti-religious and the slogan is not blasphemous. It and another prepare to be converted are a whimsical reference to the structures history as a church.

Speigel was surprised by the timing of Masihs complaint, which wasnt made until two years after the sign went up and six months into construction.

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Junction resident outraged by blasphemous slogan for lofts

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is poised for expansion in Glendale and throughout the West Valley as construction has started on a retail service center and a warehouse and office complex.

The two buildings, located near West Bell Road and North 67th Avenue and close to the Kmart and Chuck E. Cheeses, will span nearly 70,000 square feet and cost almost $10 million, according to building permits the city issued in December.

It is anticipated that the opening will occur sometime in the first quarter of 2016, said Jennifer Wheeler, a spokesperson for the churchs Greater Phoenix Public Affairs Council.

The first building will contain a Deseret Industries retail store and an employment resource center. Future expansion could include a family history center, where people can do genealogical research, according to the citys building design review narrative.

The second building will have a bishops storehouse, to which local church leaders can refer the poor and needy for commodities; a center for food storage and commercial packaging; and offices to oversee missionary efforts in the region and where church members can receive counseling.

The services available at those buildings will be familiar to many church members.

The Deseret Industries chain operates 43 stores in seven western states with significant numbers of church members. Arizona already has two DI stores, with one each in Mesa and Phoenix. The Glendale DI will replace the one in Phoenix, Wheeler said.

Arizona has four home storage centers, where church members often package food that they plan to store for months or years, but the only one serving the Valley is in Mesa. The new center in Glendale will help meet the demand in the Phoenix area.

The Church makes every effort to construct facilities where there is a concentration of members to allow them to worship and have other support services that are convenient for them to access, Wheeler said.

The mission office slated for Glendale might house the staff for the already-existing Arizona Phoenix Mission, since the church did not announce any new Arizona missions at the start of this year, according to an article in the Deseret News.

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Membership growth spurs LDS expansion

When America was building its great institutions, including the churches that would form the cultural center of many newly-emerging communities, it was an absolutely booming time for the stain glass industry, noted Donald Samick.

What so many of those churches wanted, he added, were those iconic and artistic stained glass windows.

The American studios flourished, as did studios in Germany, Austria and England, to meet the demand for glass in new church buildings across the country, noted Samick, the president and owner of J&R Lamb Studios in Midland Park, N.J.

That boom would continue until the Great Depression, he added, which slowed down new church construction or those using stained glass windows.

But not for long, he added.

During the depression, The architects who were building churches did not want to use opalescent stain glass windows, he said. They wanted to go back to gothic.

Then came the second World War, and the trend shifted back again, Samick added.

At the end of World War II, another economic resurgence took place, he said. This time all the churches built at the turn of the century without stain glass suddenly wanted to put in tributes to the wars heroes.

On Wednesday, Samick gave a lecture on Stained Glass of the J. & R. Lamb Studios and Its Contemporaries of the 20th Century at the Hugh F. and Jeannette G. McKean Pavilion at the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, as part of the museums free lecture series.

Before an overflow crowd inside the auditorium, Samick noted that there are some misconceptions about stained glass including the common view that it represents a relic of the past. Not true, he added.

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History of stained glass: from churches to collectors

Twenty five years ago, 17 people started a church in the basement of a Springboro home.

Today, Berachah Church has 500 members and worships in Middletown High School, but thats going to change after the Middletown City Schools District board of education voted 4 to 1, with Katie McNeil casting the no vote, to sell the former Verity Middle School and surrounding 60 acres to Berachah for $293,000, or 40 percent of its appraised value.

McNeil wanted to sell the school, but not all the acreage, she said.

More money was her reason, she said.

When the district held a public auction on Dec. 17 for the property at 1900 Johns Road, Berachah bid $293,000 for all three parcels, $3,000 more than the Performing Arts Academy, said George Long, district business manager. The property was appraised at $740,000, he said.

By selling the property, Long said the district wont have to demolish the school at a cost of $330,000 and that money can be used renovating Middletown High School and building a middle school. He said if the school was demolished, the 60 acres would be appraised at $250,000.

About 50 Berachah Church members stayed throughout the two-hour meeting until the board voted on the proposal. When it was announced the property was sold, there was a loud cheer in the council chambers.

During his address to board members, Lamar Ferrell, pastor of Berachah, thanked them for allowing the church to fulfill its vision and dream.

We are here to shine our light, he said. But its not our light. Its the light God put inside us. We believe in this community.

Then he added: The best is yet to come.

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Board OKs sale of former Verity School to church