High level conference on challenges for Middle East’s Christians wraps up in Jordan
(Vatican Radio) A two day conference on the challenges facing the Middle East’s Christians
wraps up today in Amman, Jordan. The conference, called by Jordan’s King Abdullah
and organized by his chief advisor for religious and cultural affairs, Prince Ghazi
bin Muhammad, brought together representatives at the highest levels of the Christian
churches in the Middle East.
Listen to Tracey McClure's interview Wednesday
with Apostolic Nuncio to Jordan and Iraq Giorgio Lingua:
The conference
was organized amid a rise in attacks against churches, kidnappings and killings of
Christians in countries across the region. The uprisings in Egypt and the conflict
in Syria in particular have led more and more Christians to leave.
King Abdullah,
who spoke to Pope Francis of the initiative in a private audience last Thursday, told
conference participants that the current climate of “intra-religious, sectarian and
ideological” violence in the Middle East “requires all of us to focus on education,
and the way we bring up our children to protect the generations to come. This is the
responsibility of families and other educational institutions, as well as mosques
and churches.”
Pope Francis recently offered a similar reflection on the
importance of education in building mutual respect between Christians and Muslims
in his personal message to the world’s Muslims for the end of Ramadan.
King
Abdullah said “We support every effort to preserve the historical Arab Christian identity,
and safeguard the right to worship freely, based on a rule in both the Christian and
Islamic faiths that underlines love of God and love of neighbor, as embodied in the
“A Common Word” initiative.”
The Amman conference opened Tuesday with a welcome
speech by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad who said Arab Christians in parts of the region
have become targets for intolerance:
According to the Jordan Times, the Prince
said “Arab Christians are suffering not only because of the blind and deaf sedition
that everyone has suffered from in certain Arab countries since the beginning of what
is incorrectly called the Arab Spring, but also merely because they are Christians.”
Prince Ghazi rejected “categorically and completely” all forms of intolerance,
recalling how Arab Muslims and Christians have lived side by side and together forged
one society over the last 1,300 years. Arab Christians from all spheres of society,
he noted, have played a vital role in the building of Arab and Muslim countries.
On Tuesday, participants heard from Patriarchs from Catholic, Orthodox and other
Christian churches in Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon while the Patriarchs and bishops
of the churches in Jordan and Jerusalem spoke of issues of concern in their respective
communities on Wednesday.
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical
Council for Interreligious Dialogue represented the Vatican at that session while
the Apostolic Nuncio in Amman, Archbishop Giorgio Lingua addressed participants as
the Holy See’s diplomatic representative to Jordan and Iraq.
Vatican diplomat
shares insights into conference Speaking to Vatican Radio’s Tracey McClure,
Archbishop Lingua praised King Abdullah’s initiative:
“As you know the situation
for Christians in the Middle East is very tense in this moment and I think the King
is good willed and wanted to try everything he can to help them to stay in this region
and to live with their Muslim brothers as best as they can. And I think this conference,
in this sense shows that he is aware that Christians are a little scared and they
are thinking to leave. And so he realizes that something must be done and so this
is the first time that such a conference was organized in a Muslim country with the
leaders of a country, in this case King Abdullah who has called a conference for Christian
leaders of the region.”
Archbishop Lingua said Christian leaders at the conference
“were worried of course about military intervention in Syria and so this is why many
of them were asking to the foreign countries not to interfere in the political affairs
of the countries of this region. They are calling for a dialogue and if the international
community can do something, it is to promote dialogue and reconciliation instead of
military intervention.”
Archbishop Lingua notes that Muslim participants at
the Amman conference and many others he has encountered “are insisting that Muslims
and Christians are Arabs. This is the concept that is becoming more (stressed) –
that Christians are not guests or second class citizens. The concept of citizenship
is a concept which is stressed because all of them are citizens of this country so
they are not guests or foreigners. And so, more than tolerance, we must stress citizenship.”
The
idea that Arab Muslims and Christians are citizens of their respective countries but
are not always respected as partners in and contributors to society was a repeated
grievance expressed at the 2010 Synod of Bishops for the Church of the Middle East.
During his 2012 pastoral visit to Lebanon to deliver the Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
to the region's bishops, Benedict XVI said the Mideast's 6 million strong Christian
community must enjoy “full citizenship” and not be treated as "second-class citizens
or believers."
And full citizenship according to Benedict XVI meant the right
to full religious freedom. Saying it was time to move beyond the concept of “tolerance”
to true “religious freedom," Benedict demanded that all people be permitted to freely
choose their own religion, and to practice it publicly, "without endangering one's
life."
Archbishop Lingua says he hopes initiatives such as the Amman conference
will lead to peace and security in the near future: “this is the priority because
with the violence, there are too many weapons circulating in this region. So if security
is restored, everything can be done and promoted. And also, the resolution of the
Palestinian Israeli conflict which many say is the root of all the Middle East’s problems.”