Beirut puts finishing touches
as it prepares to welcome the Pope
Sept. 13, 2012
BEIRUT - The committees tasked with making preparations for the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI announced Wednesday that they were putting the finishing touches on plans, while providing instructions for those who wish to participate in the weekend’s events.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Najib Mikati hailed the Pope’s visit as historic and expressed hope that it would signal a return to partnership.
“All Lebanese, Christians and Muslims are awaiting the arrival of His Holiness on Friday, and everyone trusts that his visit will bring good and peace as well as a return to true partnership between the peoples of the East,” Mikati said at the start of Wednesday’s Cabinet session.
“This session is being held two days before the historic event which we will witness for Pope Benedict XVI’s three-day visit to announce the apostolic exhortation for the Christians of the Middle East.”
Bishop Camille Zeidan, president of the Church’s Central Coordination Committee, said that “preparations for the visit are almost complete.”
Speaking at a news conference held in Beirut by the ministerial committee and the church committee assigned to the organize the visit, Zeidan outlined a number of ways members of the public can participate in the visit.
“We call on churches to ring their bells at 1:45 p.m. [Friday, corresponding to the time of the Pope’s arrival in Beirut],” he said, “and ask that at 8 p.m. that evening Lebanese place candles of white and yellow on their balconies to welcome the Pope.”
Pope Benedict XVI will sign the apostolic exhortation Friday evening at St. Paul’s Basilica in Harissa.
Environment Minister Nazim Khouri, a member of the ministerial committee, described the signing of the document as particularly significant, given the regional turmoil.
“There is no doubt that the fires ranging around us and their implications make this apostolic exhortation a historic event,” Khouri said.
“The call to adopt dialogue and commit to reconciliation which the Pope made a few days ago is the needed mechanism to begin implementing the apostolic exhortation.”
The signing of the apostolic exhortation comes two years after a special assembly on the Middle East.by the Roma Catholic Bishops Synod.
“The Lebanese are being called on, now more than ever, to be deserving of the trust that his holiness has placed in them,” Khouri added.
The Pope will meet Saturday morning with President Michel Sleiman, Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Speaker Nabih Berri in Baabda and with Muslim leaders, including ministers, lawmakers and intellectuals.
In the afternoon, the Pope will have lunch at the Armenian Catholic Patriarchate and in the evening he will meet with youth in Bkerke, seat of the Maronite Catholic Church.
Sunday will see an open-air mass at Beirut’s Waterfront. “We hope there will be a large turnout to receive the Pope, who will arrive in his popemobile from Jounieh,” Zeidan said.
“We call on participants to take their seats before His Holiness arrives,” he added, advising members of the public to arrive by 8 a.m. and officials before 9 a.m. Mass will begin at 10 a.m. and conclude at 12:30 p.m. Only Lebanese and Vatican flags will be flown at the Mass.
“Preparations for the visit started last March and a large number of people have worked to make the visit successful,” Zeidan said.
For his part, Col. Mohammad Ayoubi, who heads Beirut’s traffic police, explained the measures that will be taken for the visit.
Cars will be prohibited from parking from noon to 10 p.m. and will not be allowed to drive after 6 p.m. on Abdallah Yafi Avenue from the Barbir bridge to the Adlieh tunnel, as well as the Damascus Road from the Buick company to St. Joseph University. Traffic will be diverted to side streets.
Meanwhile, Sheikh Omar Bakri in Tripoli has come out against the papal visit over comments Pope Benedict XVI made in 2006 linking Islam to violence. Most Muslim leaders in the country have welcomed the visit.
In response to a question on why the church would not issue a strongly worded response to Bakri, Zeidan said it was not the job of the church to silence people. “We live in a democratic state, and we are not oppressive and will not silence people. We all know Sheikh Bakri’s past but the Church does not call for legal prosecution – that’s for the state to decide.”
The bishop also stressed that the Church does not involve itself in politics or take part in disputes.
Patriarch Beshara Rai will hold a news conference Thursday in Bkerke, to answer details about the Pope’s visit and to tell the public how they can best take part in Sunday's papal Mass.
Pope’s Lebanon visit made urgent by Syria’s war
and anti-US protests throughout the Middle East
By Victor L. Simpson
Waterfront site of the Papal Mass on Sunday; right, workers prepare the altar for the Mass.
VATICAN CITY, Sept. 13 (AP) — The brutal civil war in Syria and this week’s slaying of the U.S. ambassador to Libya have given a sense of urgency to Pope Benedict XVI’s trip this week to Lebanon, a mission he describes as a pilgrimage of peace for the entire region.
The three-day visit starting Friday will take the Pope to the nation with the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East — nearly 40 percent of Lebanon’s 4 million people, with Maronite Catholics the largest sect.
The Vatican stressed Benedict’s push for inter-faith dialogue in the wake of Ambassador Chris Stevens’s death at the hands of a mob enraged by a film that ridicules Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
The papal visit comes amid fears that Syria’s conflict might spill over to Lebanon. Clashes in Lebanon between Syrian groups over the past months have claimed the lives of more than two dozen people and left scores wounded. The Christian community in Lebanon is divided between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Among Assad’s supporters is former prime minister and army commander Michel Aoun, a strong ally of the militant Hezbollah group. Hezbollah’s leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah welcomed the visit, describing it as “extraordinary and historic.”
“I am not unaware of the often dramatic situation endured by the populations of this region which has been torn for too long by incessant conflict,” Benedict said in his weekly remarks to pilgrims Sunday. He assured them the visit “comes under the sign of peace.”
Lebanese authorities are enacting stringent security measures, suspending weapons permits except for politicians’ bodyguards and confining the visit to central Lebanon and the northern Christian areas.
Several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have recently urged their citizens not to visit Lebanon because of security concerns over the recent violence.
But the Pope’s spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters this week that the trip has never been in question and that Benedict has made clear he expects to be warmly welcomed. The government has declared Saturday an official holiday in Benedict’s honor and given the day off to tens of thousands of workers and students so they can greet him.
Benedict, the third Pope to visit Lebanon after Paul VI in 1964 and John Paul II in 1997, will be addressing concerns by the region’s bishops over the plight of Christians in the Middle East. War, political instability and economic hardships have driven thousands from their traditional communities dating to early Christianity in the Holy Land, Iraq and elsewhere.
Some clerics in the region have blamed the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories; others have said the rise of “political Islam” has become a threat to their well-being.
The turmoil stemming from the Arab Spring has deeply unsettled the Middle East’s Christian population, which fears being in the cross-fire of rival Muslim groups.
The 85-year-old Benedict is likely to get a full briefing on the region’s problems when he meets with Lebanese political and religious leaders and his own bishops from the region.
Newsphoto agencies say these photos show welcome signs for the Pope put up by Hezbollah, distinct from the official papal visit images that have festooned Beirut for days now.
Vatican spokesman Lombardi did not rule out that the Pope would meet some supporters of Hezbollah
[as part of the Muslim delegation he will offially meet, not as members of Hezbollah per se], a Shiite militant group that has risen steadily over the decades from anti-Israel resistance group into Lebanon’s most powerful military and political force. The U.S. considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Lombardi declined to say what the Vatican’s position is on the group.
Syria’s Assad is a crucial ally of Hezbollah and Iran its most important patron.
Lombardi said Benedict may also meet with Syrian refugees, but it is not confirmed. The U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday that the number of Syrian refugees seeking its help now tops a quarter-million, with at least 66,915 in Lebanon.
The main public event of the visit is Mass on Sunday on the Beirut waterfront.
The Lebanese army has imposed a 10-day ban on gliding over the coastal town of Jounieh and the mountain area of Harissa and its surroundings. Harissa, famous for its giant statue of the Virgin Mary, is the site of the Vatican ambassador’s residence, where Benedict will reside.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/09/2012 04:44]