Pope Benedict XVI tells Middle East Christians to persevere

[Religious News]

Pope Benedict XVI urged Christians in the Middle East to hold on to their faith and traditions at an open-air Mass attended by 50,000 worshippers.
He told them to work with other religions to enrich their daily lives and counter violent ideologies. “Be faithful to your roots,” he said yesterday in his homily at Amman’s largest football stadium.

“The Catholic community here is deeply touched by the difficulties and uncertainties which affect all the people of the Middle East,” he said on the third day of his week-long tour of the Holy Land.

“Fidelity to your Christian roots, fidelity to the Church’s mission in the Holy Land, demands of each of you a particular kind of courage — the courage of conviction, born of personal faith, not mere social convention or family tradition.”

Crowds of Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese and Iraqi Christians shouted “Benedictus . . . Benedictus” as he arrived. He responded in Arabic, saying: “As-salaam aleikum”, or peace to you.

Many had turned up at the stadium at dawn for the event. Tears rolled down the eyes of a Lebanese woman who, along with thousands of others, had made the six-hour car trip from Beirut to see the pontiff.

“I just want to fulfil my wish and pray in his presence before I die,” she said from her wheelchair, her voice choking. “I want to catch a glimpse of him and to be blessed by him.”

The Pope, 82, blessed about 1,200 boys and girls, including 40 Iraqi refugees, as well as some American children who had flown in for the event, which Jordan is using to promote itself as a destination for Christian pilgrims. The country is home to many Christian holy sites, including where Jesus was baptised and Moses was buried.

He was welcomed at the stadium by Archbishop Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. Unlike the Pope’s highly spiritual speech, Archbishop Twal spoke about “the difficulties and obstacles” facing the Roman Catholic Church in “the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel” and the “immigration of Iraqis” since the US war on Iraq in 2003.

He said that Jordan had taken in more than one million Iraqi refugees since the start of the war, including 40,000 Christians fleeing persecution.

For years the Church has been alarmed by the declining presence of Christians in the Holy Land and the wider Middle East. It says that they have been driven out by war, economic hardship and the growing influence of Muslim fundamentalist groups.

According to the official statistics, Christians now form less than 2 per cent of Jordan’s overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim population, down from about 30 per cent in the Fifties.

The Pope is to travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories today. The tour is his first trip to the Middle East as pontiff and is being closely watched by Jewish and Muslim leaders around the world.

The Pope angered Muslims three years ago when in a speech he quoted a medieval text that characterised some of Islam’s teachings as “evil and inhuman”.

He later said that the comments were misinterpreted and did not reflect his own views.

When he arrived in Jordan, the Pope expressed his “deep respect” for Islam and said that he hoped that the Catholic Church would be a force for peace.

However, he upset some Jordanians when he spoke of the “inseparable bond between the Church and the Jewish people” during a stopover at Mount Nebo, from where Moses glimpsed the promised land.

The London Times