Greg DalyIraq’s most prominent bishop has called upon the synod of bishops to “feel the experience” of Christian refugees who, rather than converting to Islam when threatened with violence, have abandoned their homes and possessions.
In a homily opening the synod’s sixth day, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako said “Faith, like love, is a commitment which grows day by day along life’s path: from faith to faith. Like reconciling love and justice. If love does not exceed justice, then the Gospel becomes empty.
“We need to feel the experience of Iraqi Christians who in one night left everything behind in order to remain faithful to their faith,” he said.
Patriarch Sako’s main concerns at the synod are the effects of war and religious persecution on family life, with such effects including family instability, enforced migration which can splinter families and communities, and the difficulty of holding fast to Catholic teaching in overwhelming Muslim countries containing self-declared “caliphates”.
Despite such challenges, he said, “the Church should keep her teaching, otherwise she’d lose the basis of Catholic doctrine,” he said, continuing, “it’d be another religion.” Whilst adamant that Church teaching on homosexuality should not change, the patriarch has said he is not opposed to some divorced and remarried people being able to receive Communion, believing this should be done on a case-by-case basis.
Criticising those who claim it could take decades to defeat the so-called “Islamic State”, the patriarch has said in interviews that such language encourages ISIS, while “discouraging Christians or other refugees, thinking they can’t go back home now”. He has called on the US to deploy ground forces in the Iraq, claiming that the US has a “moral responsibility” to do so “because they destroyed the country,” continuing, “to leave the country in a critical, chaotic situation, this is not moral.”
Pope Francis asked synod participants to devote their prayers to “the intention of reconciliation and peace in the Middle East”, saying prayers would be “an expression of solidarity” with the Middle East patriarchs and bishops “as well as with their priests and faithful and everyone who lives there”.
He urged the gathered bishops to pray both for those in the war-torn region and for the international community to look beyond immediate interests and to “use the instruments of international law and diplomacy to solve conflicts”.