MELKITE - GREEK
CATHOLIC PATRIARCHATE

http://www.radiovaticana.org/ted/Articolo.asp?c=429744

"Congenial Eastern Atmosphere:"
An Interview with Patriarch Gregorios III

(10/13/2010 rv sk)

 The Melkite Patriarch of Damascus himself, Gregorios III (Laham), bluntly admits that the synod was his idea. Speaking on Tuesday in the Aula of the Synod at the Vatican, he gave a powerful warning about a "clash of religions," if Christianity were to disappear from the Middle East. In an interview, he told our synod observer Stefan Kempis:
 
"We have slowly grown into this, so it is interesting to see these bishops doing something like this for the first time: most are bishops new to a synod, but they have felt at ease there. I thank God for the really congenial Eastern atmosphere at this Synod: there has been enthusiasm, joy and humour.”

There was at times a lively debate, with many problems on the agenda, such as for example, the emigration of many Christians from the Middle East.
 
"Yes, emigration - and the threat of emigration, means that the Middle East is becoming empty and losing pluralism. Then more clashes will occur there between Islam and Christianity! And then the difficult problem of dialogue with Islam came up for discussion. When we experience fundamentalism, terrorism and terrorist actions, we get the feeling: ‘How can we go on in the face of so many attacks?’ But the majority said: ‘That is our role, to shape the Middle East and gradually bring the different values of Christianity to the predominantly Muslim Arab society.’”

(What were the most interesting ideas and comments you've heard at the Synod?)

"For example, the suggestion of many to hold such a Synod in the Middle East - at a local level. Then there was the desire to do all in our power to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since this conflict is the main reason for most of the multiple crises and wars that have caused Christian emigration.”




 

Daily News

Pope: Peace Is Possible in Middle East
An eventful Synod meeting ends amid controversy, but the Pope strikes a hopeful note in his closing homily.

BY CINDY WOODEN (CNS)
| Posted 10/25/10 at 4:27 PM

VATICAN CITY (CNS)—Closing the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, Pope Benedict XVI said, “We must never resign ourselves to the absence of peace.”
“Peace is possible. Peace is urgent,” the pope said Oct. 24 during his homily at the Mass closing the two-week synod.
Peace is what will stop Christians from emigrating, he said.
Pope Benedict also urged Christians to promote respect for freedom of religion and conscience, “one of the fundamental human rights that each state should always respect.”
Synod members released a message Oct. 23 to their own faithful, their government leaders, Catholics around the world, the international community and to all people of goodwill. The Vatican also released the 44 propositions adopted by synod members as recommendations for Pope Benedict to consider in writing his post-synodal apostolic exhortation.
Although the bishops said the main point of the synod was to find pastoral responses to the challenges facing their people, they said the biggest challenges are caused by political and social injustice and war and conflict.
“We have taken account of the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the whole region, especially on the Palestinians who are suffering the consequences of the Israeli occupation: the lack of freedom of movement, the wall of separation and the military checkpoints, the political prisoners, the demolition of homes, the disturbance of socio-economic life and the thousands of refugees,” they said in one of the strongest sentences in the message.
They called for continued Catholic-Jewish dialogue, condemned anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism and affirmed Israel’s right to live at peace within its “internationally recognized borders.”
Although relations between Christians and Jews in the region often are colored by Israeli-Palestinian tensions, the bishops said the Catholic Church affirms the Old Testament—the Hebrew Scriptures—is the word of God and that God’s promises to the Jewish people, beginning with Abraham, are still valid.
However, they said, “recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable. On the contrary, recourse to religion must lead every person to see the face of God in others.”
Addressing the synod’s final news conference Oct. 23, Melkite Bishop Cyrille S. Bustros of Newton, Mass., said, “For us Christians, you can no longer speak of a land promised to the Jewish people,” because Christ’s coming into the world demonstrated that God’s chosen people are all men and women and that their promised land would be the kingdom of God established throughout the world.
The bishops’ point in criticizing some people’s use of Scripture was intended to say “one cannot use the theme of the Promised Land to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the expatriation of Palestinians,” Bishop Bustros said.
In their message, the bishops expressed particular concern over the future of Jerusalem, particularly given Israeli “unilateral initiatives” that threaten the composition and demographic profile of the city through construction and buying up the property of Christians and other Arabs.
They also offered words of support for the suffering Iraqi people, both Christians and Muslims, and for those forced to flee the country.
The synod members said they talked extensively about Christian-Muslim relations and about the fact that they both are long-standing citizens of the same countries and should be working together for the good of all.
“We say to our Muslim fellow-citizens: We are brothers and sisters; God wishes us to be together, united by one faith in God and by the dual commandment of love of God and neighbor,” they said.
But Christians must be given their full rights as citizens and the future peace and prosperity of the region require civil societies built “on the basis of citizenship, religious freedom and freedom of conscience.”
Throughout the synod, members said that while religious freedom and freedom of worship are recognized in most of the region’s constitutions, freedom of conscience—particularly the freedom to change religious affiliation—is not respected in many places.
The synod propositions called for educating Christians in the beliefs of their Muslim and Jewish neighbors and for strengthening dialogue programs that would help the region’s people “accept one another in spite of their differences, working to build a new society in which fanaticism and extremism have no place.”
Much of the synod’s discussion focused on the fact that many Christians are emigrating because of ongoing conflicts, a lack of security and equality and a lack of economic opportunities at home.
They praised those who have remained despite hardship and thanked them for their contributions to church and society.
While they did not call on emigrants to return home, they did ask them to consider it eventually and to think twice before selling their property in their homelands. Several bishops had told the synod that Christians selling off their property was turning previously Christian-Muslim neighborhoods and towns into totally Muslim areas.
One of the synod propositions said, “We exhort our faithful and our church communities not to give in to the temptation to sell off their real estate,” and they pledged to set up micro-finance and other projects to help people retain their property and make it prosper.
The synod members affirmed their commitment to efforts to promote full Christian unity and promised to strengthen cooperative efforts with other Christian churches in the region because “we share the same journey” and unity is necessary for effectively sharing the Gospel.
The bishops at the synod also recognized their own failures in not promoting greater communion between Catholics of different rites, with other Christians and with the Jewish and Muslim majorities of their homelands.
And they told their lay faithful, “We have not done everything possible to confirm you in your faith and to give you the spiritual nourishment you need in your difficulties.”
All Christians, including the bishops, are called to conversion, they said.
The propositions called for creation of a “commission of cooperation” between church leaders of different rites, the sharing of material resources and establishment of a program to share priests.
They also echoed a repeated call in the synod for the pope to study ways to expand the jurisdiction of Eastern Catholic patriarchs and major archbishops to allow them greater power in providing for their faithful who live outside the traditional territory of their churches and to consider dropping restrictions on ordaining married men to the priesthood outside the traditional homeland of the particular church.

Maronite Archbishop Joseph Soueif of Cyprus told reporters, “The synod is not a medical prescription or a cure” for the problems Christians face in the Middle East, “it’s a journey that is just beginning” and will have to be implemented by the region’s Catholics.

Copyright © 2007 Circle Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
 

What Is Driving Christians Out of the Middle East?

Dana Kennedy Contributor

(Oct. 13) -- Christians are fleeing the birthplace of Christianity in the Middle East, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be to blame, according to regional bishops summoned to the Vatican this week to reverse the troubling trend.
Melkite Patriarch Gregory III of Damascus, Syria, said at the gathering that Christian emigration is "among the most dangerous effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
He predicted that the Christian exodus will turn Arab society into "a society with only one color, a society uniquely Muslim," the Catholic News Service reported.

An Iraqi Kurdish man attends the Christmas Day service at the Evangelist Kurdzman church in the northern city of Arbil, 200 miles from the Iraqi capital Baghdad, on Dec. 25, 2009. Many of the people at the service, held in the Kurdish language, were former Muslims who converted to Christianity.
Pope Benedict XVI called the two-week synod this week out of alarm over the dwindling population of Christians in a region that holds Christianity's holiest sites.
Two Muslim imams and a rabbi will address the 185 bishops from the Middle East taking part in the synod.
The synod's "working document" singled out Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories as a crucial factor for why Palestinian Christians feel so beleaguered and are apt to leave, The Associated Press reported.
Palestinian Christians are dependent on Israel for permission to enter holy sites located within Israel proper.
A few bishops also blamed radical Islamic extremists for the exodus of Christians from the Middle East.
Syrian Catholic Archbishop Basile Casmoussa of Mosul, Iraq, said that "waves of terrorism inspired by religious ideologies" as well as a decreasing Christian birthrate and an increasing Muslim birthrate are key reasons Christians are losing ground in the Middle East.
Iraq's Catholic population dropped from 2.89 percent of the country in 1980 to 0.89 percent last year. The share of Catholics in Israel's population decreased from 3.8 percent in 1980 to 1.82 percent last year.
Patriarch Gregory III, Damascus archbishop of the Greek-Melkites, an Eastern Rite church that answers to Rome, said extremist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah stemmed from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"Should the East be emptied of its Christians," he said, "this would mean that any occasion would be propitious for a new clash of cultures, of civilizations and even of religions, a destructive clash between the Muslim Arab East and the Christian West."
American Cardinal John Foley, a Vatican fundraiser, singled out Israeli policies as the driving reasons behind Christian alienation in the Middle East.
"While many including the Holy See have suggested a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the more time passes, the more difficult such a solution becomes, as the building of Israeli settlements and Israeli-controlled infrastructure in East Jerusalem and in other parts of the West Bank make increasingly difficult the development of a viable and integral Palestinian state," he said, according to the AP.
But author and TV host Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who calls himself "America's rabbi," said he was incredulous at the sentiments expressed at the synod.
"Blaming Israel for Christians leaving is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard," Boteach told AOL News. "Israel is responsible for all the freedoms in the Middle East. Israel loves Christian visitors.
"Imagine if all the Jews gave up and left Israel tomorrow and decided to all go live in Malibu," Boteach added. "Would homosexuals in the Middle East still be killed? Would there still be honor killings of a sister by her brother? Would Christian churches suddenly open in Saudi Arabia? Would the Taliban suddenly have multistate meetings? The blame for Christians leaving lies in the totalitarian regimes that trample on religious rights and are discriminatory and xenophobic."
But Tim Wallace-Murphy, author of "What Islam Did For Us," said Israel has "polarized" the Middle East.
"Conditions are so bad in Palestine at the moment that they make South Africa under apartheid look like child's play," Wallace-Murphy told AOL News. "Because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you're either Muslim and pro-Arab or you're not. If Christians continue to leave in droves it's a problem not only for Catholics but for Christians worldwide."
Hares Chehab, secretary general of Lebanon's National Committee for Islamic-Christian Dialogue, said it was more than a problem and called it a "deadly dilemma."
"They must choose between disappearance and isolation, which would bring an end to their historical role and their mission," said Chehab, who also cited the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the root of the Christian exodus from the region.
Chehab, a papally appointed observer at the synod, spoke at the gathering Tuesday.
If the Middle East is viewed as Muslim and the West as Christian, "any occasion would be propitious for a new clash of cultures, of civilizations and even of religions -- a destructive clash between the Muslim Arab East and the Christian West," Chehab said.
"To make peace, this is the great challenge. This is the great 'jihad' and the great good," Chehab said. He used the word "jihad," the Arabic word for "struggle."

TheBostonPilot.com
Synod members alarmed by declining Christian populationsBy Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Concern, and even alarm, over the real threat of the disappearance of Christians from the Middle East was a recurrent theme at the Synod of Bishops focusing on the region.
Christians, who were present in the region long before Islam, "are presently facing a deadly dilemma: to choose between disappearance and isolation, which would bring an end to their historical role and their mission," said Hares Chehab, secretary general of Lebanon's National Committee for Islamic-Christian Dialogue.
Chehab, a papally appointed observer at the synod, addressed the gathering Oct. 12 and echoed concerns voiced by a variety of bishops who spoke before him.
The region is gradually emptying itself of Christians, "who had contributed so much to the elaboration of its civilization, and were always the pioneers in the battle for its freedom, its ascent to modernity," he said.
The emigration of Christians cannot be attributed only to economic difficulties, "otherwise the whole region would have been depopulated," Chehab said. He pointed instead to "discrimination, persecution in certain areas, fear in others, the lack of freedom (and) inequality of rights" as the leading motives for leaving.
A key to addressing the problem is to strengthen Christian-Muslim dialogue, he said. But while dialogue is taking place in many countries throughout the region, too often it never gets beyond the common belief in one God and values like the importance of family, which Christians and Muslims share, he said.
The standard dialogue style "should give way from now on to another form where the language of complaisance would be banned, to focus especially on truth, no matter how hard it is, but with love and sincerity," Chehab said.
Chehab, like many of the synod members, pointed to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the chief reason for the strained relations and sense of insecurity that push many Christians to flee the region.
Melkite Patriarch Gregoire III Laham of Damascus, Syria, told the synod that "among the most dangerous effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" is the phenomenon of Christian emigration, "which will make Arab society a society with only one color, a society uniquely Muslim."
If the Middle East is seen as Muslim and the West seen as Christian, "any occasion would be propitious for a new clash of cultures, of civilizations and even of religions -- a destructive clash between the Muslim Arab East and the Christian West," the patriarch said.
Patriarch Laham also called for increased Christian-Muslim dialogue and for Christians to tell their Muslim brothers and sisters "what our fears are," including concern about a lack of separation between religion and government, lack of equality and about a legal system that is based on Islamic law.
"To make peace, this is the great challenge. This is the great 'jihad' and the great good," he said, using "jihad," the Arabic word for "struggle."
U.S. Cardinal John P. Foley, grand master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, told the synod that praying for peace in the Middle East is an obligation all Christians share.

In Middle East, democracy is the ‘Great Jihad’
AFP
Posted by admin on October 14, 2010
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

There’s nothing like the realistic possibility of extinction to push people beyond euphemisms, forcing them to lay it on the line. That was the spirit of several presentations yesterday afternoon during the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, as Catholic leaders from the region described a future that might be paraphrased as “democracy or death.”
The disappearance of Christians from the Middle East also poses the real and present danger, speakers said, of exacerbating a “clash of civilizations” between Christian and Islam.
The Synod of Bishops for the Middle East is being held in Rome Oct. 10-24.
Greek-Melkite Patriarch Gregorios III Laham of Syria offered perhaps the most forceful diagnosis, warning that the steady migration of Christians out of the region poses a whole series of worrying consequences.
“It will make Arab society a mono-color society, exclusively Muslim, facing a society in Europe that’s said to be Christian,” Laham said. “If that happens, and the East is emptied of its Christians, it could mean a new clash of cultures, civilizations and religions, a destructive conflict between an Arab Muslim East and the Christian West.”
In order to convince Christians to stay put, Laham said, it’s time to speak frankly to Muslims about why Christians are afraid.
That, he said, means talking bluntly about “the separation between religion and the state, ‘arabness,’ democracy, whether the nation is Arab or Muslim, human rights and laws that propose Islam as the lone or principal source of legislation – which constitute an obstacle to the equality of Christians as citizens before the law.”
“There are also fundamentalist parties, Islamic integralism, to which are attributed acts of terrorism, killings, burnings of churches, extortion, all in the name of religion, which rely on the strength of being a majority to humiliate their neighbors.”
All of that, Laham said, makes peace-making the great challenge of the region – what he called its Great Jihad.”
Archbishop Georges Casmoussa of Iraq struck a similar note, warning that increasingly Christians are seen in the Muslim street as “troops led by and for the so-called Christian West, and thus considered a parasitic body within the nation.”
Places where Christians have been present since long before the rise of Islam, Casmoussa said, are becoming a “Dar el-Islam” where Christians feel unwanted.
Too often, Casmoussa said, Christians living in an Islamic nation feel compelled to choose between “invisibility or exile.”
Harés Chéhab, the secretary general of a national committee for Islamic-Christian dialogue in Lebanon, insisted that the exodus of Christians out of the Middle East cannot be understood solely as a function of the region’s economic problems.
“If that were the case, the entire region would be depopulated,” he said. “It’s obvious that discrimination, persecution in some places, fear in other, the absence of freedom, [and] a disparity in rights are at the basis of this movement.”
Chéhab spelled out the challenges: “The relationship between religion and the state, in other words between with is spiritual and what’s temporal, secularity, extremism, fundamentalism, terrorism.”
He called for a more direct language in discussing these realities with Muslims, in order to “make them aware of the reality of our problems.”
In that regard, Maronite Bishop Nabil Andari offered one creative idea: The creation of a new group of Christian intellectuals in the region, who could make the argument for a genuinely democratic culture with space for religious minorities.
Andari called such a group a “permanent cenacle of Arab Christian thinkers.”
Archbishop Youssef Bechara, a Maronite, suggested that in making the case with Muslims for democracy and a separation between religion and the state, Christians should avoid the terms “secular” and “secularism,” because Muslims generally associate secularism with irreligiosity and immorality.
Instead, Bechara said, it’s better to refer to “citizenship” and a “civil state,” because those are the terms used by reform-minded Muslim writers.
That language, he said, would allow the reform movement to “go beyond the level of the elites, for whom citizenship, dialogue and even freedom are allowed, in order to be able to reach the masses which can be manipulated and turned towards any sort of extremism.”

Oct 13, 3:22 PM EDT
Mideast conflict blamed for Christian exodus
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press Writer © 2010 The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Bishops summoned to the Vatican to discuss the flight of Christians from the Middle East have blamed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for spurring much of the exodus and warned that the consequences could be devastating for the birthplace of Christianity.
Some bishops have singled out the emergence of fanatical Islam for the flight. But others have directly or indirectly accused Israel of discriminating against Arab Christians and impeding solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In fact, the working document of the two-week synod accused the Israeli "occupation" of Palestinian territories of creating difficulties in everyday life for Palestinian Christians, including their religious life since their access to holy sites is dependent on Israeli military permission.
Pope Benedict XVI called the two-week synod, which continued Wednesday, to try to encourage Christians in the largely Muslim region, where the Catholic Church has long been a minority and is shrinking as a result of war, conflict, discrimination and economic problems.
In Iraq alone, Catholics represented 2.89 percent of the population in 1980; by 2008 they were just .89 percent. In Israel, home to important Christian holy sites, Catholics made up 3.8 percent of the population in 1980; by 2008 they were just 1.82 percent.
About 185 bishops are taking part in the synod from Latin and Eastern rite Catholic churches across the region and from the diaspora. In addition, two Muslim imams and a rabbi were invited to address the synod.
Patriarch Gregory III, archbishop of the Greek-Melkites in Damascus, Syria, said fundamentalist movements such as Hamas or Hezbollah had been born from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and warned Tuesday that the resulting flight of Christians would make a "society with only one color: only Muslim."
"Should this happen, should the East be emptied of its Christians, this would mean that any occasion would be propitious for a new clash of cultures, of civilizations and even of religions, a destructive clash between the Muslim Arab East and the Christian West," he said.
American Cardinal John Foley, a longtime Vatican official who now raises money to support Christian sites in the Holy Land, also said the conflict had contributed to the growth of Islamic fundamentalism but blamed Israeli policies specifically.
"While many including the Holy See have suggested a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the more time passes, the more difficult such a solution becomes, as the building of Israeli settlements and Israeli-controlled infrastructure in East Jerusalem and in other parts of the West Bank make increasingly difficult the development of a viable and integral Palestinian state," he told the gathering.
Rabbi David Rosen, head of inter-religious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, said he expected some degree of blame would be voiced against Israel during the synod. But he said he thought the Vatican had done a responsible job in containing it and trying to ensure that the synod "is not totally politically hijacked by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
In his speech to the synod Wednesday, Rosen objected to the suggestion that the Israeli "occupation" of Palestinian territories was the root cause of the conflict, noting that the conflict preceded the 1967 war during which the West Bank and Gaza came under Israeli control.
"'Occupation' in fact is precisely a consequence of the conflict, the real 'root issue' of which is precisely whether the Arab world can tolerate a non-Arab sovereign polity within its midst," Rosen said.
He said Arab Christians in Israel fared comparatively well compared to Christian communities in other countries in the region, noting that their socio-economic status was higher than the Israeli average.
At a news conference, Rosen acknowledged that one issue - the recent decision by Israel to require new citizens to pledge a loyalty oath to a "Jewish and democratic" state - had ruffled some feathers and said he personally regretted it.
But he said it had been misunderstood by the Coptic Catholic patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt, Antonios Naguib, who is running the synod. During a first-day news conference, Naguib called the decision a "flagrant contradiction" since Israel claims to be the only democratic state in the region.
Rosen said Naguib "did not understand the difference between 'Jewish' as an ethnic collective and 'Jewish' as a religious expression, which is not what most Israelis understand the meaning to be of a Jewish state.
In comments to The AP, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor contended that Israel is "the only country in the Middle East where the number of Christians has been constantly increasing over the years. In the Palestinian territories, the Christian population has dwindled over the years because of pressures by Islamic extremists."
"To ignore this key factor and to pretend that the Christian plight is one and the same across the region is to do a disservice to truth," he added..
 

Opinion - Middle-East bishops face 'democracy or death'
Published: October 15, 2010
 

There’s nothing like the realistic possibility of extinction to push people beyond euphemisms, forcing them to lay it on the line, writes John Allen.
That was the spirit of several presentations this week during the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, as Catholic leaders from the region described a future that might be paraphrased as “democracy or death.”
The disappearance of Christians from the Middle East also poses the real and present danger, speakers said, of exacerbating a “clash of civilizations” between Christian and Islam.
The Synod of Bishops for the Middle East is being held in Rome October 10-24.

Greek-Melkite Patriarch Gregorios III Laham of Syria offered perhaps the most forceful diagnosis, warning that the steady migration of Christians out of the region poses a whole series of worrying consequences.
“It will make Arab society a mono-color society, exclusively Muslim, facing a society in Europe that’s said to be Christian,” Laham said. “If that happens, and the East is emptied of its Christians, it could mean a new clash of cultures, civilizations and religions, a destructive conflict between an Arab Muslim East and the Christian West.”
In order to convince Christians to stay put, Laham said, it’s time to speak frankly to Muslims about why Christians are afraid.
That, he said, means talking bluntly about “the separation between religion and the state, ‘arabness,’ democracy, whether the nation is Arab or Muslim, human rights and laws that propose Islam as the lone or principal source of legislation – which constitute an obstacle to the equality of Christians as citizens before the law.”
“There are also fundamentalist parties, Islamic integralism, to which are attributed acts of terrorism, killings, burnings of churches, extortion, all in the name of religion, which rely on the strength of being a majority to humiliate their neighbors.”

All of that, Laham said, makes peace-making the great challenge of the region – what he called its Great Jihad.”

SAN EGIDIO
NEWS FROM THE MEETING
OCTOBER 4 2010 
Gregorios III Laham, Greek Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and Jerusalem: "Do not make Jerusalem a political capital. It's a sacred space that must remain the capital of faiths"

Gregorios III Laham, patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, has lived in Jerusalem for almost twenty years, and speaking about this city says forcefully: "Jerusalem is the capital of our faith. Point. I ask you: Jews, Palestinians, Arabs, Americans, Europeans, do not make a political capital! It does not make a municipality, which you will be the directors, statutory auditors. "

So Laham spoke at the meeting of Sant'Egidio in Barcelona, during a panel on the city of the three faiths. "Why do you want to make it a political capital? I know that I'm saying this out of all the opinions. I am, as they say in Arabic, a bird that sings a different melody from the melody of all the other birds. I am an Arab Christian and I am completely behind my Palestinian brothers. I have always affirmed the right of both the peoples, Palestinians and Israelis, to have a homeland, a nation. Starting from this point, despite all the legitimate aspirations of Jews, Christians, Muslims, I say: do not usurp the right of God on this town".

For Laham: "No nation has power over Jerusalem, it is haram, sacred. You have to understand what has been said about the prophets in Jerusalem. We must not denigrate this word, result of divine inspiration, or create a caricature of it, devalue it, make it meaningless by interpreting it with a political decision, or ethnic origin. With the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem the word of God has been politicized and manipulated. It has lost its beauty, its sublime and divine character... Remove your hands from Jerusalem! Above all you, politicians. Complied with the plan, the economy of God on it. It is not your feud your domain, your property. "
 

VATICAN 10-24 Oct 2010 Pope calls special session of Synod of Middle East bishops

Pope Benedict XVI called a special meeting of the Synod of Middle East Bishops to discuss relations with Islam and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the priestly celibacy issue might be unavoidable. Three Eastern Catholic patriarchs from Iraq and Lebanon have been invited for their expertise on Islamic-Christian tensions, but could be sounded out as well on priestly marriage. As it is allowed in the Eastern tradition, pro-reform Roman Catholics could see their inclusion as a hopeful sign.
The Eastern rite Catholic churches are under the jurisdiction of the Vatican and they recognize the authority of the pope, but their traditions are closer to Eastern Orthodox traditions.
Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Pierre Sfeir, Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly and Syrian Patriarch Ignace Youssif III Younan will participate as honorary president delegates. They come from nations that have seen bloody conflicts in recent years. Coptic Catholic Patriarch Antonios Naguib will be relator general for the meeting. Archbishop Joseph Soueif of Cyprus, a Maronite, will be special secretary. The official theme is: "The Catholic Church in the Middle East: Communion and Witness."
Reformers believe that allowing married priests would help to attract newcomers to the priesthood. In Oct 2005, as reported by Times Online, some 250 cardinals and bishops gathered at the Vatican, and some suggested Roman Catholic priests should be allowed to marry as a way of overcoming the shortage of priests. The celibacy question, which was suppressed under Pope John Paul II, according to the Times, came to dominate the meeting under his successor.
Bishop Roberto Camilleri Azzopardi, of Honduras, said that his diocese had only one priest for every 16,000 Catholics, while Bishop Lorenzo Voltolini Esti, of Ecuador, said that the number of people going to confession was dropping because priests were not available.
Celibacy has no theological foundation,” Patriarch Gregorios III Laham, of the Melkite Catholics, said. If married priests were allowed in the Eastern rite, there was no reason for them to be banned in the Latin, or Western, rite, he said.
Catholic Culture news notes that the working paper for the Synod session devotes considerable attention to relations with Islam: the need to cultivate amicable relations and the drive to secure reciprocal respect, so that Christians in Muslim nations receive the same legal rights that Muslims are accorded in Christian lands. The consideration of the Israel-Palestinian problem emphasizes a "two-state solution." There is also discussion of the need for the Church to evangelize more effectively in Israel.