{"id":476,"date":"2009-05-13T09:48:18","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T09:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/benedict-among-the-christians.html"},"modified":"2009-05-13T09:48:18","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T09:48:18","slug":"benedict-among-the-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/benedict-among-the-christians.html","title":{"rendered":"Benedict among the Christians"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Pope<\/span>For me today’s events–in Bethlehem and the Occupied Territories–are highlights of this papal trip to the Holy Land. Much of the focus is, inevtiably, on the pope’s relations with Islam and Judaism–not the best, especially in the latter case–and it seems they will be what they will be. Others focus on the geopolitics, as John Allen did in his NYT preview<\/a>, as to how Benedict XVI might help foster peace. But I think that’s unrealistic, even if we have hope. <\/p>\n

Benedict’s chief task is to be a Christian witness to all sides, and to really give spiritual and material uplift to the Christian population there. Ethan bronner of the Times has a very comprehensive piece on the region’s disappearing Chris<\/a>tians:<\/p>\n

\n

JERUSALEM — Christians used to be a vital force in the Middle East. They dominated Lebanon and filled top jobs in the Palestinian<\/font><\/a> movement. In Egypt, they were wealthy beyond their number. In Iraq, they packed the universities and professions. Across the region, their orientation was a vital link to the West, a counterpoint to prevailing trends. <\/p>\n

But as Pope Benedict XVI<\/font><\/a> wends his way across the Holy Land this week, he is addressing a dwindling and threatened Christian population driven to emigration by political violence, lack of economic opportunity and the rise of radical Islam. A region that a century ago was 20 percent Christian is about 5 percent today and dropping.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

CNS has the text of the Mass in Manger Square <\/a>in Bethlehem…Before that Mass, as NYT coverage notes<\/a>, Benedict called for a sovereign Palestinian state and a lifting of the embargo on Gaza: <\/p>\n

\n

BETHLEHEM, West Bank<\/font><\/a> — Pope Benedict XVI<\/font><\/a> traveled Wednesday to this town that Christians revere as the birthplace of Jesus, telling Palestinians<\/font><\/a> that after decades of suffering, they had a right to a sovereign homeland “in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with its neighbors, within internationally recognized borders.”<\/p>\n

Confronting the region’s political tripwires, he evoked “the loss, the hardship and the suffering” of Palestinians in war-torn Gaza, saying he prayed for the lifting of the economic embargo that Israel has imposed there since the militant group Hamas<\/font><\/a> took control in 2007. <\/p>\n

And, speaking in the presence of President Mahmoud Abbas<\/font><\/a> before offering a mass in a sunlit Manger Square, he also urged young Palestinians to “have the courage to resist any temptation you may feel to resort to acts of violence or terrorism.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yet CNS also notes that just 100 Gazans received permits<\/a> from Israel to attend, less than half the Latin patriarch’s request. <\/p>\n

Concern for the largely Arab Christian population should not be, and isn’t a left-right issue. Deal Hudson has been outspoken on behalf of Palestinian Christians, as in this column<\/a>. And he called on the pontiff to visit  Gaza, which isn’t going to happen.<\/p>\n

But Benedict will soon visit a refugee camp bound in by the wall Israel is building, and that will be a remarkable moment and photo. Will update as it happens. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For me today’s events–in Bethlehem and the Occupied Territories–are highlights of this papal trip to the Holy Land. Much of the focus is, inevtiably, on the pope’s relations with Islam and Judaism–not the best, especially in the latter case–and it seems they will be what they will be. Others focus on the geopolitics, as John…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,7,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nBenedict among the Christians - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/05\/benedict-among-the-christians.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Benedict among the Christians - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For me today’s events–in Bethlehem and the Occupied Territories–are highlights of this papal trip to the Holy Land. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}