Struggling to raise funds for the restoration of his cathedral’s antique organ, a priest from St.-Flour, a small town in France’s heartland, came up with a creative solution. He turned one of the bell towers into a curing workshop where farmers could hang their hams to dry. For nearly two years, after being blessed by […]

For much of her life, Sumaya Ainaya spent weekend and summer nights on Mount Qasioun, which overlooks the city of Damascus, joined by other Syrians drinking coffee, smoking hookah and eating corn on the cob roasted on grills nearby. But soon after the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, the military under President Bashar al-Assad […]