The head of the Maronite Church will visit the UK for the first time in January.
The Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, Cardinal Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, will visit Maronite communities in England and meet senior clergy, parliamentarians and members of the government over the week of 7-14 January.
Cardinal Al-Rai will visit the Maronite parish in London and celebrate Masses in Maronite rite (called the Syriac Liturgy of St James) in Ealing Abbey and Birmingham Oratory.
He will concelebrate the latter with the Archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley, “in celebration of the communion that exists between the Holy See and the Maronite patriarchate”.
The Maronite Church, which numbers four million members across the world, is one of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome as sui iuris (independent) churches.
It dates its origins to the fourth-century monk St Maron and his disciples, who founded a monastery near Antioch and later moved into the mountains of modern-day Lebanon, where Maronites now make up 30 per cent of the population and are the largest religious community.
Cardinal Al-Rai, as the patriarch of this community since 2011, is regarded as one of Lebanon’s most significant public figures, particularly amid a political and economic crisis which has left the country without a president and 80 per cent of its population in poverty.
He has also spoken frequently on the perilous situation of Christianity in the Middle East. He will address this subject in meetings with religious and political leaders in the UK.
The patriarch will meet the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and will also participate in an ecumenical vespers in St Chad’s Cathedral in Birmingham, where the preacher will be Cardinal Michael Fitzgerald M Afr, the patron of the charity Fellowship and Aid to the Christians of the East (FACE).
The charity describes the Christian presence in Lebanon as “a vital source of stability to the country and the wider region, sustaining a culture of plurality and tolerance”.
Pope Francis has said that it is “Lebanon’s vocation [to be] a land of tolerance and pluralism, an oasis of fraternity where different religions and confessions meet, where different communities live together, putting the common good before their individual interests”.