With the Melkite patriarchate based in Damascus, Syria -- the destination of St. Paul when he was converted to Christianity -- Pope Benedict XVI asked Melkite Catholics to be enthusiastic participants in the upcoming Pauline year.The pope asked each Melkite Catholic, diocese and parish for "a more intimate knowledge of the person of Christ, thanks to a renewed reading of the Pauline literature."
Meeting Melkite Patriarch Gregoire III Laham of Damascus, members of the Melkite bishops' synod, heads of Melkite religious orders and hundreds of pilgrims at the Vatican May 8, the pope said a renewed faith would lead to a powerful witness to the Gospel and would "guarantee a flourishing future for the Melkite church."
The pilgrimage was part of the Melkite church's preparations for the Pauline year, which Pope Benedict will open in late June to mark the 2,000th anniversary of St. Paul's birth.
Pope Benedict praised the Melkite church -- an Eastern Catholic church -- for maintaining its vitality "despite the difficulties of the social and political situation" in its Middle East homeland.
Melkite communities are found throughout the region; they are in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The pope also praised Melkites for their ecumenical outreach, particularly to the Orthodox, and for their "fraternal, sincere and objective" relations with their Muslim neighbors.
"The Melkite church is engaged with Muslims in the sincere search for mutual understanding as well as to promote and defend together social justice, moral values, peace and liberty for the benefit of all," the pope said.
"We Arab Christians, living in a majority Muslim world, have a unique, irreversible, obligatory and almost exclusive mission," Patriarch Laham told the pope, adding that they had lived together with Muslims since the founding of Islam.
Christians in the region, he said, want "to bring Jesus, his Gospel, its message and values to our fellow citizens."
But he also said the challenge is growing as the number of Melkites in the region shrinks.
Emigration, the patriarch said, "is decimating our presence in our countries of origin, and it continues to worsen for different reasons, the main one being the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
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