Aid to the Church in Need York Event: Faith in a Time of Crisis
Father Samer Nassif of Lebanon, who was keynote speaker at the Aid to the Church in Need event in York
16 May 2009 12:00
English Martyrs Church
Dalton Terrace
York
YO24 4DA
Lebanese priest Father Samer Nassif told the audience at Aid to the Church in Need’s York Event that Christians in the Middle East had a key role to play in promoting peace and inter-faith harmony among different religious and ethnic groups in the region.
Speaking at the event at English Martyrs Church in York on 16th May, Father Nassif said: “The mission of the Christians of the Middle East is to be the light of Christ for the Jews of Israel and for the immense multi-ethnic and multi-confessional Muslim world which surrounds them.”
But he described how Christians – who lived in the region “before the rise of other religions including Islam and Druze” – suffer persecution and discrimination.
He cited the example of Saudi Arabia, where it is illegal to be in possession of a Bible or wear a Crucifix.
Turning to the Holy Land, Father Nassif described how Christians are living between two religious extremes – militant Islamic parties such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad and extremist Jewish parties including Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu.
He told the sixty-strong audience: “None of these extremist groups is favourable towards Christians.
“Christians feel political and social pressures from both sides.”
Faced with such pressures many Christians have left the Middle East for a new life elsewhere.
Father Nassif said: “These Middle East Christian populations have been forced to emigrate because of the various forms of dictatorial regimes, because of violence and because of persecution from Islamist ideologies and terrorism.”
Pope Benedict XVI visited the Holy Land in May 2009 and urged Catholics to stay in the region.
Father Nassif underlined the problem, saying: “Because of emigration, Christians are only two percent of those in Israel/Palestine today – 40 years ago it was 20 percent.”
He also highlighted the ongoing exodus of Christians from Iraq, saying: “The Iraqi Church is the most persecuted Church in the world.”
Father Nassif added that Iraq’s Christian community was “a martyr Church”.
“It is suffering much more than the other Iraqi communities. They are living in a country of terrorism, of no security – where jobs do not exist for them because they are Christians.”
Despite this suffering, Father Nassif said Christians had a calling to bring peace to these troubled areas.
“Without Christians, Christ would be missing from the Middle East," he explained.
“And without Christ, the prince of peace, the soil on which our saviour and the virgin Mary trod would never be a land of true peace.”
He went on to describe how, in his native land of Lebanon, Christians live alongside Shiites, Sunnis and Druze in “hundreds of villages” – even though the country is still recovering from over half a century of occupation, during which time thousands were killed.
Yet with political instability in the region Lebanese people fear their country will be engulfed in a new escalade of violence between Israel and Hezbollah.
Father Nassif stressed the importance of the intercession of the Virgin Mary – invoked as Our Lady of Lebanon – to the Lebanese people, and said that Muslims and Druze venerate her “in their own way”.
Speaking of the Holy Land he said: “The heart of our celestial mother is sad because of the war in her land that continues to offend her divine son."
His talk was received with “great rounds of applause,” according to Betty East, Aid to the Church in Need’s regional secretary for the North East.
She added “everyone was very moved when Father Samer led us in a hymn to the Virgin and gave the final blessing.”