By Crux
Doreen Abi Raad
At a gathering of Middle East leaders coinciding with the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the Syriac Orthodox patriarch emphasized the need to unify efforts against extremism and terrorism.
Doreen Abi Raad
At a gathering of Middle East leaders coinciding with the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the Syriac Orthodox patriarch emphasized the need to unify efforts against extremism and terrorism.
“A hundred years after the genocide during the Ottoman Empire and
major displacements,” Christians in the region are still facing similar
circumstances, said Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II of
Antioch.
“Many of our churches have been destroyed and hundreds of thousands
of our Christian brothers have been forced to migrate from the land of
their fathers,” Aphrem said. “To whose benefit is it if the region is
emptied of Christians?”
He opened the Jan. 22-23 executive committee meeting of the Middle
East Council of Churches, which he hosted at the patriarchal residence
in Atchaneh, Lebanon.
Members of the executive committee attending the meeting included
Iraqi Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, patriarch of Chaldean Catholics; the
Rev. Habib Badr, senior pastor of the National Evangelical Church of
Beirut; and Souraya Bechealany, acting secretary-general of Middle East
Council of Churches; as well as bishops and representatives from
Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches in the Middle East.
Aphrem called for regular meetings, at both the spiritual and
political levels, to unify efforts against extremism and terrorism, as
well as “to promote the principles of coexistence, human values,
religious freedom and the spiritual and social values that exist.”
“We know that our future is the future of living together with our
Muslim brothers,” the patriarch said, adding that “if we want to have a
secure future,” all must work together.
The patriarch lamented “the great silence of the great world powers”
regarding the fate of two bishops kidnapped in Syria nearly six years
ago, Orthodox Metropolitan Paul of Aleppo and Syriac Orthodox
Metropolitan Gregorios Yohanna of Aleppo.
In its final statement, the executive committee called on “the
international community and the Arab world to work for the release of
the kidnapped bishops” as well as priests and lay abductees.
It called for “the establishment of peace in Syria and the dignified
and safe return of displaced persons to their homeland and for the
restoration of Iraq’s recovery and the return of uprooted children to
their land.”
It rejected the decision to declare Jerusalem the capital of “the
occupying power” and called for the “realization of the state of
Palestine stipulated in the relevant international resolutions.”
It also condemned “all forms of extremism and terrorism,” expressing
their hope for the “cooperation between churches and Islamic authorities
to build a religious discourse” based on “the values of love, peace,
social justice and dialogue.”