Workshop leads up to Sunday's Synod Beginning

(October 09, 2010) The special synod on the Middle East begins this Sunday, but a workshop was held during the week where a group of scholars were working on a document that will be a contribution from the laity to the synodal assembly. The workshop, organized by Pax Romana, concluded on Saturday. It gathered some 50 representatives of the Catholic intellectual world linked to the countries of the Middle East. The apostolic vicar of Arabia, Bishop Paul Hinder, participated in a press conference Wednesday to present the workshop. The participants' objective was to reflect on some topics indicated in the synod's 'Instrumentum Laboris,' such as the political question, the relationship between Islam and the West, migrations, ecumenism and religious liberty, and to elaborate a document that represents a contribution of the laity to the synodal assembly. Bishop Hinder noted how a Western conception of "Middle East" can tend to be reduced to the Holy Land. But his jurisdiction includes the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and other sates. The Christian community made up exclusively of immigrants, especially Filipinos and Indians, which carry on despite the restrictions to religious liberty, he stated. According to Bishop Hinder, there is a risk for the Church in the Middle East of concentrating on the past, but he is expecting the synod to look toward the future, avoiding "the danger of being too concentrated on the past of our territories.