Sunday, September 16, 2012

Pope pleads for 'grim trail of destruction' to end in Syria

Pope Benedict XVI meets Hezbollah MPs while visiting Lebanon's political leaders The Pope made an impassioned appeal on Sunday for an end to the "grim trail of death and destruction" plaguing Syria and the Middle East. 

His words washed over the congregation of hundreds of thousands that attended an open-air Mass in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, on the last day of his three-day visit. 

He appealed to the international community, especially Arab Countries, to help find a peaceful outcome to the Syrian civil war.

"Why so much horror? Why so many dead," said Pope Benedict XVI. "Sadly the din of weapons continues to make itself heard, along with the cry of the widow and the orphan."

International efforts to stem the violence in Syria appeared to stall again on Sunday as rebel commanders said the peace mission was "bound to fail" after reportedly speaking with international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

"We are sure Brahimi will fail like the other envoys before him, but we (the rebels) do not want to be the reason of his failure," said Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi after speaking with Mr Brahimi.

On the same day of the Holy Mass in Lebanon, Syrian state television said that rebels had detonated a bomb under the highway near the southern town of Khirbet Ghazaleh, killing eight people and wounding 25.
Among the estimated 350,000 strong crowd of worshippers were Syrians whose lives had been devastated by war in the past year. They said that as international efforts failed they took comfort in the prayers of the Holy Father. 

"I escaped from Syria because we became targets in the war," said Father Manaf Obeid, a priest who fled from a village near Homs. "Pope Benedict gives us hope that we don't need to flee the region. He reminds us that Christians are a part of the Middle East". 

Pope Benedict spoke from an altar on a white podium in the form of a giant Cedar tree, Lebanon's symbol. Bishops from more than a dozen churches that make up the country's Christian population fanned to his right and left. 

The Arab Spring revolutions of the past year and half has left Christians, a minority in the Middle East, fearing that a crusade will be waged against them by rising Islamic fundamentalists. Pilgrims from across the Middle East attended the ceremony to take comfort in his words. 

"We love the Pope and we came to pray for him and we hope that he will pray for us," said Valley Georges, 27 from Iraq. 

"I came here to feel peace, because we are passing a threatening situation," said Jaqueline, 46, a Coptic Catholic from Egypt.