VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV vowed to take “every effort” Wednesday to work for peace in the Middle East and Ukraine and to actively promote the spirituality and traditions of the eastern rite churches, those Catholic communities with origins in the Mideast and eastern Europe that have been decimated by years of conflict and persecution.
“The church needs you!” Leo told a Holy Year audience of eastern rite pilgrims.
Eastern-rite Catholics accept the authority of the pope but have many of their own rituals and liturgy. They include the Coptic, Chaldean, Maronite and Eritrean Catholic churches, as well as the Syro-Malabar church in India and Greek Catholic communities that are found across Eastern Europe and the Americas. Unlike Orthodox Christians, these Catholic churches fully recognize papal authority.
In his remarks, Leo acknowledged that many eastern rite Catholics have been forced to flee their homelands because of “war and persecution, instability and poverty.” It was a reference to the exodus of Christians from the Middle East, Iraq and Syria especially, where entire communities have been displaced by years of Islamic extremist violence. Many of these communities in northern Iraq were some of the oldest of the faith, where the dialects of Aramaic — the language of Jesus — are still spoken.
Leo vowed to work for peace in those regions, citing in particular the Middle East and Ukraine, and said the Holy See was ready to “help bring enemies together, face to face.”
“Who better than you can sing a song of hope even amid the abyss of violence?” he said. “From the Holy Land to Ukraine, from Lebanon to Syria, from the Middle East to Tigray and the Caucasus, how much violence do we see!”
In one of his first acts as pope, Leo spoke by telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who invited him to Ukraine and thanked him for his support. Leo has in the in Ukraine “an imperialist invasion in which Russia wants to conquer territory for reasons of power given Ukraine’s strategic location.”
The Vatican under Francis was largely sidelined in any peace efforts, though the Holy See did work on prisoner exchanges and to reunite Ukrainian children who were taken to Russian territory back with their families.
Zelenskyy, who met with President Donald Trump in St. Peter's Basilica on the sidelines of Pope Francis' funeral, is expected in Rome for Leo's formal installation Mass on Sunday.
Leo praised those Christians who are working at reconciliation even in regions where they are persecuted minorities, and urged them to continue.
“I thank God for those Christians — Eastern and Latin alike — who, above all in the Middle East, persevere and remain in their homelands, resisting the temptation to abandon them,” Leo said. “Christians must be given the opportunity, and not just in words, to remain in their native lands with all the rights needed for a secure existence.”
The audience featured a mix of faithful from around the world, with Lebanese and Ukrainian flags and ululating pilgrims.
Leo recalled that his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, paid particular attention to the eastern rite churches. That Leo, who was pope from 1878 to 1903, penned the first specific document about the dignity of eastern rite churches and the need to preserve and celebrate their traditions in the west.
That Leo went so far as to threaten any Latin rite priest in the west with dismissal if he tried to bring an eastern rite Catholic over to the western traditions of the Latin rite.
The former Cardinal Robert Prevost lamented that today, these Catholics often find indifference among other Latin rite Catholics when they resettle in communities in the diaspora. They “risk losing not only their native lands, but also, when they reach the West, their religious identity," he said.
"As a result, with the passing of generations, the priceless heritage of the Eastern Churches is being lost,” the pontiff said.
He urged the Vatican office that deals with eastern churches to define guidelines for Latin rite bishops to better support diaspora communities, saying the contribution that eastern churches can give the west is “immense.”
“We have great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty,” he said.
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