A priest from the Middle East has said that the region’s Christians can play a key role in promoting peace and inter-faith harmony among different religious and ethnic groups.
Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) on May 16th , 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.” He also 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 told ACN: “None of these extremist groups is favorable 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 (May 8-15th , 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.”
The Lebanese priest also highlighted the ongoing exodus of Christians from Iraq, telling ACN: “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 savior and the Virgin Mary trod, would never be a land of true peace.”
He went on to described 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.”
