MIDEAST-SYNOD Sep-18-2009 (450 words) xxxi

Pope ready to announce synod on Middle East for 2010

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Vatican sources said Pope Benedict XVI was
preparing to convene a Synod of Bishops for the Middle East to be held
in October of 2010, to address the trials and tribulations of the
Christian population in the region.

Patriarchs and other representatives from Eastern churches arrived in
Rome Sept. 18, and the pope was to meet with them the next day to
discuss the initiative, the sources said. An announcement of the synod
was expected in coming days.

Pope Benedict has spoken frequently about the pressures faced by
Christian and Catholic minorities in the Middle East, particularly in
the Holy Land and in Iraq. The synod would provide an opportunity for
a much-needed strategizing session at the level of the universal
church, one source said.

The Vatican press office would not confirm reports of a Middle East
synod, but it released the names of 11patriarchs and other
representatives meeting the pope Sept. 19 at his summer residence in
Castel Gandolfo.

They included the Chaldean patriarch, Cardinal Emmanuel-Karim Delly of
Baghdad, Iraq; Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal of Jerusalem; the
Lebanon-based Maronite patriarch, Cardinal Nasrallah P. Sfeir; and
representatives of the Ukrainian, Syro-Malabar, Coptic, Melkite,
Syrian, Armenian, Romanian and Syro-Malankar rites.

Last January, Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk, Iraq, and
other Iraqi bishops in Rome for their "ad limina" visits asked the
pope to convene a special synod for the churches of the Middle East.

Archbishop Sako said the priority topics for such a synod would
include the problem of Christians fleeing the Middle East, paying
Christian witness in a predominantly Muslim world, relations with
Muslims, the role of Christians in civil and political life, lack of
full religious freedom and Christians’ prospects for the future.

Bishop Maroun Lahham of Tunis, Tunisia, a Jordanian native of
Palestinian parentage, told Catholic News Service earlier this year
that when the church discusses Asia — as it did in a 1998 synod for
that region — "it’s the Philippines, India, Japan, not the Middle
East."

Bishops Lahham, who worked as a priest in the Latin Patriarchate of
Jerusalem as well as in the United Arab Emirates, said while the
Middle East is technically part of the Asian land mass, "the issues
… were very unlike those" in typically Asian countries.

"We didn’t feel (the Asian synod) was meant for us," said the bishop,
who was head of the seminary in Beit Jalla, West Bank, at the time.

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Contributing to this story was Pat Morrison in Tunisia.

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