- Pope Benedict XVI’s mid-September visit to Lebanon reminded Christians in the turbulent Middle East that the Church has not forgotten them or the challenges they face.
- “I am not unaware of the often dramatic situation endured by the populations of this region, which has been torn for too long by incessant conflict,” Benedict said the week before the visit during his weekly Sunday address.
- Nowhere in the region are people suffering more right now than in Syria, where the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has been fighting rebel forces since April 2011, at the cost of thousands of lives.
- While in Lebanon, the Pope referred twice to the strife in Syria, which threatens to spill over into the neighboring countries of Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Israel, which captured the Golan Heights from Syria, is on high alert as well. “You know all too well the tragedy of the conflicts and the violence which generates so much suffering,” the Pope said Sept. 16 following an open-air Sunday Mass in Beirut attended by more than 350,000 people. He lamented that in Syria “the din of weapons” is now heard alongside “the cry of the widow and the orphan.”
- The war has created an enormous refugee crisis, according to the United Nations, which places the number of those who have left Syria at roughly 250,000 people. Although most have sought shelter in refugee camps or private homes in neighboring countries, some have traveled as far as Switzerland.
Syria’s Suffering Christians Flood Neighboring Countries as Civil War Continues | Daily News | NCRegister.com
