“Blessed Father. Beloved by all Ukrainians, Pope Francis!” The enthusiasm from the major archbishop for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, was evident as he greeted Pope Francis in the Pope's native language.

Along with the much larger Ukrainian group, a smaller Greek-Catholic delegation from Belarus attended. The Pope spoke about how St Josaphat is an example of the communion of saints. “The memory of this martyred saint speaks to us about the communion of saints, of the communion of life between all of the people who belong to Christ.”

The Pope added that the best way to honor St Josaphat is to love and serve towards the unity of the Church. He called on Ukrainians to build stronger relationships with other Churches. “I hope that the deep communion that you wish to strengthen each day within the Catholic Church, will help you build bridges of fraternity also with other Churches and ecclesiastical communities in Ukrainian land, and wherever your communities are present.”

“With good information about risk, pain and lack of health benefits of the intervention, I think parents from minorities would voluntarily abstain from circumcising children,” Anne Lindboe, Norway’s Children’s Ombudsmen, told the Norwegian Aftenpost daily last week.

Lindboe, who last year advised Jews and Muslims to replace circumcision with “a symbolic ritual,” also told the paper that non-medical circumcision of pre-teen boys should be outlawed and those performing it should be punished similarly to people who use violence against children.

“We introduced a law on violence against children even though we had reason to believe that individuals would still be beaten and mistreated,” she said, dismissing concerns raised in Norwegian media that a ban on ritual circumcision would mean that parents would perform it illegally.

They emphasized “the need to bring an end to the violence” in Syria, ensuring humanitarian assistance to Syrians affected by the fighting while seeking ways to find a “peaceful solution to the conflict,” the Vatican said in a statement.

They also touched on “the life of the Catholic community in Russia,” according to the Vatican, but the Holy See spokesman, the Rev Federico Lombardi, said that the “ecumenical question” between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, whose relationship has been tense since the two churches divided nearly 1,000 years ago, was not discussed.

A recent signatory is Dr Belinda Martineau, former member of the Michelmore Lab at the UC Davis Genome Center, University of California, who helped commercialise the world’s first GM whole food, the Flavr Savr tomato. Dr Martineau said: “I wholeheartedly support this thorough, thoughtful and professional statement describing the lack of scientific consensus on the safety of genetically engineered (GM) crops and other GM organisms (also referred to as GMOs). Society’s debate over how best to utilize the powerful technology of genetic engineering is clearly not over. For its supporters to assume it is, is little more than wishful thinking.”

Another signatory, Dr Judy Carman, director of the Institute of Health and Environmental Research, Adelaide, and adjunct associate professor, health and the environment, Flinders University, South Australia, said: “Of the hundreds of different GM crops that have been approved for human and animal consumption somewhere in the world, few have been thoroughly safety tested. So it is not possible to have a consensus that they are all safe to eat – at least, not a consensus based on hard scientific evidence derived from experimental data.”

A third signatory, Professor Elena Alvarez-Buylla, coordinator of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics of Plant Development and Evolution, Institute of Ecology, UNAM, Mexico, said: “Given the scientific evidence at hand, sweeping claims that GM crops are substantially equivalent to, and as safe as, non-GM crops are not justifiable.”

Civil society groups (including ENSSER, Testbiotech, the Foundation on Future Farming, and the German Family Farmers Association) filed a lawsuit in March 2013, claiming that the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) had recommended approval for the “stacked” GMO variety without carrying out proper risk assessments as required by law.

The variety is a complex one, containing traits for producing its own toxins and also providing resistance the Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide. However, in spite of Intacta’s potential for introducing novel proteins and unique toxic effects into the animal and human food supply, EFSA did not insist on any safety or animal feeding studies prior to approval, so its real health effects are completely unknown.

Ecological organizations are also deeply concerned about the new GMO soy, because of its potential for inflicting considerable damage in sensitive ecosystems.

But for MK Meir Porush of United Torah Judaism, the reason Iran was able to “pull the wool” over the eyes of the US and other negotiating countries, who agreed to ease sanctions on Iran in exchange for a promise by Tehran to suspend its uranium enrichment program, has as much to do with Israelis as it has to do with Iran's negotiating savvy.

“This is a bad deal,” said Porush, who is a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “The Prime Minister needs to know that the Torah is the only thing that can defend and save the Jewish people. We as Jews believe that the attempts to harm the world of Torah harms the security of Israel.” By advocating drafting yeshiva students and cutting funding to yeshivas, the government is endangering Israel's security – with one result being that Iran has now been strengthened.

Agreeing with him was MK Eli Yishai (Shas), chairman of the Knesset Committee on Homefront Preparation. “The nations of the world see their narrow financial interests before them, not their responsibility to defend the Jewish people,” he said. “Once again we see that the Jewish people is a nation that dwells alone. We have no one to rely on but our Father in heaven,” he said.

Saudi Arabia claims they were kept in the dark by Western allies over Iran nuclear deal and says it will strike out on its own. Nawaf Obaid told a think tank meeting in London that Saudi Arabia was determined to pursue its own foreign policy goals. Having in the past been reactive to events, the leading Sunni Muslim nation was determined to be pro-active in future.

Mr Obaid said that while Saudi Arabia knew that the US was talking directly to Iran through a channel in the Gulf state of Oman, Washington had not directly briefed its ally. "We were lied to, things were hidden from us," he said. "The problem is not with the deal struck in Geneva but how it was done."

A fellow of Harvard University's Belfer Centre and adviser to Prince Mohammad, the Saudi ambassador to London, Mr Obaid said Saudi Arabia would continue to resist Iranian involvement in the Syrian civil war. In particular he pointed to Iranian Revolutionary Guards involvement in battles in Syria on behalf of the regime.

The deal itself is modest enough. It in effect freezes Iran's nuclear programme, in return for the lifting of a handful of sanctions, making it easier for Iran to sell cars, oil, petrochemicals and gold. Congress is very sceptical about the deal. Many are suggesting that they should push for fresh sanctions even though the White House has claimed this could shatter the agreement.

Some have vociferously protested Iran gets more out of it than the West. This is probably correct, and those who say this is largely a confidence-building measure are almost certainly right. But it is the next step that worries people. The constant critics who see Obama as weakness personified trot out "Munich" and "deal with Hitler".

Some point out that what can be frozen can be thawed - in other words, it is pretty easy for Iran simply to re-start its programme once the sanctions have disappeared. The Saudis are unhappy that Iran's influence may grow. Perhaps they would rather have that country as a dangerous pariah than see it accepted as a legitimate player in the region.

Others are concerned it is part of a wider trend of US disengagement from the Middle East. If Iran does give up on the weapons programme it says doesn't exist, Israel might find itself under greater polemical, if not actual political, pressure to give up its own undeclared nukes.

This may be a historic deal; it is what sort of history it leads to that is really important.

“That's why we don't take anything at face value. That's why you don't take it for granted.” Asked if he were skeptical whether Iran would actually comply with the signed deal, Kerry said trust wasn’t necessary, and no one was expecting Iran to “turn over a new leaf.” “There's nothing built on trust,” Kerry said. “You don't have to trust the people you're dealing with, you have to have a mechanism put in place whereby you know exactly what you're getting and you know exactly what they're doing.”

Kerry compared the negotiations to dealing with the Soviet Union in terms of a lack of trust between negotiators. “We've done arms control agreements in other parts of the world,” Kerry said. “You don't trust. It's not based on trust. It's based on verification.”

“I know that there are those who will assert that this deal is imperfect. Well, they too bear a responsibility, and that is to tell people what the better alternative is,” Kerry declared.

The deal has been criticized by Israeli leaders – Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called it an “historic mistake,” while Minister Naftali Bennett warned it could lead to nuclear terrorism – and by Saudi leaders as well, who have termed the West's willingness to trust Iran “incomprehensible.”

Netanyahu and Arab leaders urged western nations to keep the pressure on Iran through sanctions until Iranian leaders agreed to better terms. That was not an option, Kerry argued.

The officials said Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and other Arab and Persian Gulf countries have been discussing the next steps toward possible strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. The officials said the US passed strong messages to Israel and the Saudis that the Americans control radar capabilities over the skies near Iran and that no strike should be launched without permission from the Obama administration.

It was unclear whether the purported visit to Saudi Arabia by Israeli military and intelligence officials signals any real preparation for a strike or if the trip was meant to keep pressure on the West amid Israeli fears about the current deal with Tehran. The trip came prior to the announcement today of the deal with Western powers that aims to halt key parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

At a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed what he called a “bad” and “dangerous” deal, while affirming that Israel will not allow Iran to go nuclear.

The discussions were kept hidden even from America's closest friends, including its negotiating partners and Israel, until two months ago, and that may explain how the nuclear accord appeared to come together so quickly after years of stalemate and fierce hostility between Iran and the West.

But the secrecy of the talks may also explain some of the tensions between the US and France, which earlier this month balked at a proposed deal, and with Israel, which is furious about the agreement and has angrily denounced the diplomatic outreach to Tehran. President Barack Obama personally authorized the talks as part of his effort - promised in his first inaugural address - to reach out to a country the State Department designates as the world's most active state sponsor of terrorism.

After raising expectations of a deal by first convening on November 8-10, it would have been beyond humiliating to gather again without result. So agreement was struck despite solemn incantations earlier that “no deal is better than a bad deal.”

This interim agreement is badly skewed from America’s perspective. Iran retains its full capacity to enrich uranium, thus abandoning a decade of Western insistence and Security Council resolutions that Iran stop all uranium-enrichment activities. Allowing Iran to continue enriching, and despite modest (indeed, utterly inadequate) measures to prevent it from increasing its enriched-uranium stockpiles and its overall nuclear infrastructure, lays the predicate for Iran fully enjoying its “right” to enrichment in any “final” agreement.

Indeed, the interim agreement itself acknowledges that a “comprehensive solution” will “involve a mutually defined enrichment program.” This is not, as the Obama administration leaked before the deal became public, a “compromise” on Iran’s claimed “right” to enrichment. This is abject surrender by the United States.

Netanyahu believes the six-month deal leaves Iran's military nuclear capabilities largely intact, while giving Iran relief from painful economic sanctions, undermining negotiations on the next stage. At the same time, Israel's strongest piece of leverage, the threat of a military strike on Iran, seems to be out of the question despite Netanyahu's insistence it would remain on the table.

"Today the world became a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world made a significant step in obtaining the most dangerous weapons in the world," Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday, calling the deal a "historic mistake." He said Israel was not bound by the agreement, and reiterated Israel's right to "defend itself by itself," a veiled reference to a possible military strike against Iran.

Yoel Guzansky, who used to monitor the Iranian nuclear program for Israel's National Security Council, said Israel's main card - military action - appears to be out of the question right now. "How can Israel, after the entire international community sat with Iran, shook hands with Iran and signed an agreement, operate independently?" he said. "It will be seen as someone who sabotages 10 years of trying to get Iran to the table and trying to get a deal."

Following a months-long diplomatic campaign warning of the dangers of easing economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for steps to curb its contested nuclear programme, senior cabinet ministers chimed in, with one saying Israel reserved the right to strike Iran on its own.

Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that "what was achieved yesterday in Geneva is not a historic agreement but rather a historic mistake." Speaking later at a ceremony in Jerusalem, he said that the more details emerged on the deal, "the more it becomes clear how bad the deal is for Israel, the region and the world."

"Iran gets billions of dollars in sanction relief without paying an actual price," said Netanyahu. "Iran gets written permission to breach UN Security Council" resolutions. According to Netanyahu, the agreement "rescues Iran from a significant part of the pressure it was under, while giving it international legitimacy to continue its nuclear programme. This is a bad deal."