Synod for the Middle East to Begin on Sunday

(October 09, 2010) Pope Benedict XVI is inaugurating the Special Synod of Bishops for the Middle East with a Mass Sunday morning at St Peter’s Basilica with 246 concelebrants. This Special Assembly is being held in the Vatican from 10 to 24 October with the theme: "The Catholic Church in the Middle East: Communion and Witness. Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul". Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops explained that Middle East means, apart from Jerusalem and the Palestinian Territories, there are sixteen States like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Turkey and others. This region has a Catholic Population of 5.7 million which is 1.6 percent of the total Population. The Prelate added that apart from the Church of the Latin tradition, since earliest times there have been six Eastern Catholic Churches, each with its own patriarch, father and head of the Church, with variety of traditions, spirituality, liturgy and disciplines. The Special Assembly for the Middle East, Archbishop Eterovic continued, will be attended by 185 Synod Fathers including 101 ordinaries from the ecclesiastical circumscriptions of the area, and twenty-three from the diaspora who have responsibility for faithful of the Eastern Catholic Churches who have emigrated from the Middle East to all corners of the world. Also present will be thirty-six experts and thirty-four auditors, both men and women. Arabic will be one of the official languages of this Synod, along with French, English and Italian, said Archbishop Eterovic. The aims of the Special Assembly are mainly of a pastoral nature, to revive communion between the Eastern Catholic Churches and strengthening Christian identity through the Word of God.