In Search of a place of peace
A Sunday under the banner of peace. This is what yesterday, 9 September, was
in the Pope's words and intentions. In a certain sense it was an anticipation of
what will be the international Journey, now at hand, which Pope Benedict XVI
will be making next Friday, 14 September to Lebanon. Yet symbolically his Visit
opens to embrace the whole of the Middle Eastern
region.
It was of this area that the Pope spoke to the faithful gathered in Castel
Gandolfo for the customary recitation of the Angelus. He recalled the drama of
the suffering inflicted on the peoples by years and years of war and expressed
his intention to go to them to help them not to be resigned to violence and to
the heightening tensions, but rather to seek the ways of dialogue and
coexistence to create a future of peace. His appeal was deliberately repeated in
the Message signed by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State, addressed
to the participants in the International Meeting for Prayer for Peace organized
in Sarajevo by the Sant'Egidio Community. It is an appropriate connection
between the situations of two nations, Lebanon and Bosnia and Herzegovina,
countries both multi-ethnic and multi-cultural by definition, which have
suffered the drama of the violence of war and now, perhaps in different ways,
are showing, or in any case intend to witness to the world that it is possible
to find the path of peaceful coexistence in dialogue and in the search for the
truth. “Living together is the future”, the Message says. The hope for this was
echoed by the ephphatha (“be open”) of the Sunday Gospel which
resonated at Castel Gandolfo at the Angelus as an invitation to come out from
isolation and establish a relationship with God and with all men and women. The
Pope is convinced that dialogue is the only way to achieve peace and
reconciliation in the tortured region of the Middle East. A dialogue entrusted
to the responsibility “of all the parties concerned”, which involves “the
international community, with ever greater awareness of the importance, for the
whole world, of a stable and enduring peace throughout the region”.
Arab translation of the Pope's words at the Angelus about his Visit in Lebanon
