From: joachim omolo ouko
News Dispatch with Father Omolo Beste
SATURDAY, MAY 24, 2014
Pope Francis has just arrived in Holy Land with a call for urgent steps to end Syria’s three-year-old civil war. His Middle East trip is also aimed at bringing hope to the region’s dwindling Christian population.
More than 160,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict and millions have fled to neighboring countries, including Jordan. The refugees are from all faiths, but Christians feel threatened by radical Sunni Muslims now leading the military insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad.
In Israel and the occupied West Bank, where the pope will travel on Sunday and Monday, more Palestinian Christians are looking to leave, accusing Israel of eroding their economic prospects and hobbling their freedom of movement.
Thamer Boulus, a 45-year-old Iraqi teacher fled the city of Mosul with his family because he was receiving death threats as a Christian. Threats to Christians have been scrawled by suspected Jewish radicals on Church property in the Holy Land.
Pope believes that one way of ending this conflict when members of all religions work together for peace. This can explain why he has enlisted a rabbi and an Islamic leader to be part of a travelling papal delegation for the first time. Rabbi Abraham Skorka and Omar Abboud, a leader of Argentina’s Islamic community, are the Pope’s longtime friends from Argentina.
Even though it is a risk for the Pope to travel without tight security, the Vatican said Francis wanted to travel in a normal car and would eschew bulletproof vehicles. He travelled from the airport in a modest white car and arrived at the stadium on the back of an open-topped vehicle.
According to Palestinians, the fact that Pope is flying in directly from Jordan instead of going through Israel’s security barrier from Jerusalem is a major morale boost. Pope Francis is due to get a firsthand look at the plight of Syrian, Iraqi and Palestinian refugees later Sunday when he celebrates Mass at Amman’s international stadium and then meets with some 600 refugees and disabled children at a church in Bethany beyond the Jordan, which many believe is the traditional site of Jesus’ baptism.
Sunday evening he will head to Jerusalem and meet with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople to celebrate the 50th anniversary of this historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras.
On Monday, he will visit the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Western Wall, and Yad Vashem. He will spend time with the two Chief Rabbis, and with Israel’s president Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. To wrap it all up, he will meet with men and women religious in the church of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives, celebrate mass one more time, and then depart for Rome at 8 p.m.
The Syrian Civil War, also known as the Syrian Uprising is an armed conflict in Syria between forces loyal to the Ba’ath government, which took power in 1963, and those seeking to oust it. The protests were part of the wider North African and Middle Eastern protest movements known as the Arab Spring with Syrian protesters at first demanding democratic and economic reform within the framework of the existing government.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
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