Missionline's Giorgio Bernardelli writes another good background story on the Synodal Assembly for the Middle East, this time for Avvenire.
That 'tiny flock'
dear to the Pope's heart
by GIORGIO BERNARDELLI
Translated from
Sept. 21, 1990
Pope Benedict XVI's decision to call a special assembly of the Bishops' Synod on the Middle East in October 2010 must be seen as the culmination so far of a series of important steps.
In announcing it yesterday, he himself recalled that attention to the Eastern-rite Churches has always marked his Pontificate from the beginning.
On Christmas 2006, Papa Ratzinger addressed a specific message to the Christians of the Middle East, in view of the tragic stories from the war in Iraq and the exodus of Christians from the Middle East.
On the very day that the Church was remembering the birth of Jesus in that part of the world, the Pope chose to address that 'tiny flock' directly. To reassure them but also to invite the entire Church not to leave them alone.
"For some time," he wrote then, "many Christians have been leaving the Middle East, so that the holy places risk being transformed into archeological zones, devoid of ecclesial life."
"Certainly, dangerous geopolitical situations, cultural conflicts, economic and strategic interests, not to mention aggressiveness which seeks to justify itself by claiming a social or religious matrix, make the survival of minorities difficult, and that is why many Christians have yielded to the temptation to emigrate. Often, the damage can be somewhat irreparable.
"Nonetheless, it must not be forgotten that even just staying close to each other and living common suffering together can act like balsam on wounds, and dispose the community to thoughts and works of reconciliation and justice.
"That gives rise to a familial and fraternal dialog, and in time and with the grace of the Spirit, it can change into dialog on a broader front - cultural, social and even political."
But besides the contingent difficulties being experienced by the Christians of the Middle East, there is also another aspect that recurs in Benedict's concerns: the conviction that the experience lived by the Church there in its early years is a crucial experience to be rediscovered. Indeed, it was there that many of the Fathers of the Church lived to whom Papa Ratzinger has been devoting his Wednesday catecheses.
The churches of the East were also the objects of the missionary journeys of the Apostle of the Gentiles to whom the Pope dedicated a Jubilee Year.
The churches of the Middle East, then, constitute not just a community in danger that must be protected, but a living experience to be treasured.
Benedict XVI said so clearly last May, during his trip to the Holy Land, in the Greek Melkite Cathedral in Amman.
"The ancient living treasure of traditions in the Oriental Churches," he said then, "enriches the universal Church and must never be understood only as something to be kept passively. All Christians are called on to respond actively to the mandate of God to bring others to know him and to love him".
Finally, there's an ultimate aspect that deserves attention - an unprecedented face of Christianity in the Middle East: the presence in the Gulf States of hundreds of thousands of Christian workers coming mostly from Southeast Asia
[mostly Filipinos, and therefore, mostly Catholic].
In the note that the Patriarchs gave the Pope on Saturday, one of the points precisely had to do with the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Kuwait and the other Gulf emirates.
And in this regard, Benedict XVI has already taken very important steps, such as receiving in audience the King of Saudi Arabia and the Emir of Bahrain, reiterating on these occasions how fundamental the right to religious freedom is in these countries. And certainly, the Synodal assembly for the Middle East will see this point discussed.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/09/2009 17:55]