VATICAN CITY (CNS): Closing the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, Pope Benedict XVI said, “We must never resign ourselves to the absence of peace.”
“Peace is possible. Peace is urgent,” the Pope said on October 24 during his homily at the Mass closing the two-week synod.
Peace was what would stop Christians from emigrating, he said.
Pope Benedict also urged Christians to promote respect for freedom of religion and conscience, “one of the fundamental human rights that each state should always respect”.
Synod members released a message on October 23 to their own faithful, their government leaders, Catholics around the world, the international community and to all people of goodwill.
The Vatican also released the 44 propositions adopted by synod members as recommendations for Pope Benedict to consider in writing his post-synodal apostolic exhortation.
Although the bishops said the main point of the synod was to find pastoral responses to the challenges facing their people, they said the biggest challenges were caused by political and social injustice and war and conflict.
“We have taken account of the impact of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the whole region, especially on the Palestinians who are suffering the consequences of the Israeli occupation: the lack of freedom of movement, the wall of separation and the military checkpoints, the political prisoners, the demolition of homes, the disturbance of socio-economic life and the thousands of refugees,” they said in one of the strongest sentences in the message.
They called for continued Catholic-Jewish dialogue, condemned anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism and affirmed Israel’s right to live at peace within its “internationally recognised borders”.
Although relations between Christians and Jews in the region often were coloured by Israeli-Palestinian tensions, the bishops said the Catholic Church affirmed the Old Testament – the Hebrew Scriptures – was the word of God and that God’s promises to the Jewish people, beginning with Abraham, were still valid.
However, they said, “recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable. On the contrary, recourse to religion must lead every person to see the face of God in others.”
Addressing the synod’s final news conference on October 23, Melkite Bishop Cyrille Bustros of Newton, Massachusetts, in the United States, said, “For us Christians, you can no longer speak of a land promised to the Jewish people,” because Christ’s coming into the world demonstrated that God’s chosen people are all men and women and that their promised land would be the kingdom of God established throughout the world.
The bishops’ point in criticising some people’s use of Scripture was intended to say “one cannot use the theme of the Promised Land to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the expatriation of Palestinians”, Bishop Bustros said.
In their message, the bishops expressed particular concern over the future of Jer-usalem, particularly given Israeli “unilateral initiatives” that threaten the composition and demographic profile of the city through construction and buying up the property of Christians and other Arabs.
They also offered words of support for the suffering Iraqi people, both Christians and Muslims, and for those forced to flee the country.
The synod members said they talked extensively about Christian-Muslim relations and about the fact that they both were long-standing citizens of the same countries and should be working together for the good of all.
