Mags Gargan“Political solutions must be sought urgently”
Although Christians, Muslims and Jews have struggled for hundreds of years to live peacefully alongside each other in the Middle East, “we have never seen the kind of ‘religious cleansing’ we are witnessing today,” said the head of the region’s Franciscans.
“All religious communities must raise their voices against this abomination” being carried out, particularly in Iraq and Syria, by terrorists calling themselves the Islamic State, said Franciscan Fr Pierbattista Pizzaballa, custos of the Holy Land.
Intervention
Speaking in Rimini, Italy, at an international meeting sponsored by the Communion and Liberation movement, Fr Pizzaballa said political, economic and probably military intervention will be needed to protect the Christian and other minority communities of the Middle East.
However, he added, their survival ultimately will depend on the courage and willingness of the region’s inhabitants to love and protect one another.
“Political solutions must be sought urgently, but they won’t save Christianity in the Middle East,” he said. “Their presence will be saved by the little ones, by those who courageously step up and challenge death, selflessly loving their brothers and sisters.”
Reconstruction
Clearly, the Islamic State’s “fanaticism must be stopped, if necessary even with force,” the Franciscan said. “Nevertheless, the use of force without a plan for reconstruction on every level will resolve nothing. Force stops; it destroys.
“However, if there is no reconstruction then the void created by the use of force will give life to even greater extremism.”