Aid to the Church in Need: Christians can promote peace in Middle East

Christians can promote peace in Middle East

Posted by Press release on 22/5/2009, 10:52 am
Board Administrator

ACN News: Friday, 22nd May 2009 –

Christians can promote peace in Middle East

By John Newton

A PRIEST from the Middle East has said the region’s Christians can play a key role promoting peace and inter-faith harmony among different religious and ethnic groups.
Speaking at a recent Aid to the Church in Need event on the 16th May, Lebanese cleric Fr Samer Nassif said: “The mission of the Christians of the Middle East is to be the light of Christ for the Jews of Israel and for the immense multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Muslim world which surrounds them.”
But he described how Christians – who lived in region “before the rise of other religions including Islam and Druze” – suffer persecution and discrimination, citing the example of Saudi Arabia, where it is illegal to be in possession of a Bible or wear a Crucifix.
Turning to the Holy Land, Fr Nassif described how Christians are living between two religious extremes – extremist Islamic parties such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad and extremist Jewish parties including Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu.
He pointed out to his audience that: “None of these extremist groups are favourable towards Christians – Christians feel political and social pressures from both sides.”
Faced with such pressures many Christians have left the Middle East for a new life elsewhere.
Fr Nassif said: “These Middle East Christian populations have been forced to emigrate because of the various forms of dictatorial regimes, because of violence, and because of persecution from Islamist ideologies and terrorism.”
He stressed how, during Pope Benedict XVI visit to the Holy Land (8-15th May 2009), the pontiff had urged Catholics to stay in the Holy Land.
Fr Nassif said: “Because of emigration, Christians are only two percent of those in Israel/Palestine today – 40 years ago it was 20 percent.”

Fr Samer Nassif

The Lebanese priest also highlighted the ongoing exodus of Christians from Iraq, telling those at the ACN event: “The Iraqi Church is the most persecuted Church in the world.”
Describing Iraq’s Christian community as “a martyr Church,” he went on to say: “[It] is suffering much more than the other Iraqi communities. They are living in a country of terrorism, of no security – where jobs do not exist for them because they are Christians.”
Despite this suffering the Lebanese priest said Christians had a calling to bring peace to these troubled areas: “Without Christians, Christ would be missing from the Middle East. And without Christ, the prince of peace, the soil on which our saviour and the virgin Mary trod, would never be a land of true peace.”
He went on to describe how, in his native land of Lebanon, Christians live alongside Shiites, Sunnis and Druze in “hundreds of villages” – even though the country is still recovering from over half a century of occupation, during which time thousands were killed.
Yet with political instability in the region Lebanese people fear their country will be engulfed in a new escalade of violence between Israel and Hezbollah.
Fr Nassif stressed the importance of the intercession of the Virgin Mary – invoked as Our Lady of Lebanon – to the Lebanese people, and said that Muslims and Druze venerate her “in their own way.”
Speaking of the Holy Land he said: “The heart of our celestial mother is sad because of the war in her land that continues to offend her divine son.

Editor’s Notes:

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 130 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 46.5 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

While ACN gives full permission for the media to freely make use of the charity’s press releases, please acknowledge ACN as the source of stories when using the material.

For more information, please contact the Australian office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web: www.aidtochurch.org

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Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148 ABN: 62 418 911 594
Ph/Fax (02) 9679-1929 e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org web: www.aidtochurch.org