Pope Francis laments the suffering of the “martyr Churches” of the East

Pope Francis highlighted the suffering of the “martyr Churches of the East,” which bear the “stigmata of Christ” due to wars, especially in Ukraine and the Holy Land.

The Pontiff received this morning in the Vatican the participants of the Assembly “Meetings of the Works for the Aid of the Eastern Churches”, which concludes today in Rome.

From the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican, the Holy Father highlighted the suffering suffered by Eastern Christians due to the armed conflicts that devastate their lands.

The Martyr Churches of the East

At the beginning of his speech, he noted that the Churches of the East are “Churches to love,” because they “guard unique spiritual and wisdom traditions, and have much to tell us about Christian life, synodality and liturgy.”

However, the Pontiff lamented that their “beauty is wounded,” because “they are crushed by a heavy cross and have become ‘martyr churches’ that carry within themselves the stigmata of Christ.”

“Yes, just as the flesh of the Lord was pierced by the nails and the spear, so many eastern communities are wounded and bleed because of the conflicts and violence they suffer,” he asserted.

Faced with this situation, the Holy Father remarked, “we cannot remain indifferent,” while highlighting the objective of the assembly of those gathered there: “to find the best way to unite and alleviate the suffering of our Eastern brothers and sisters.” .

In this way, he encouraged them to continue supporting the Eastern Catholic Churches “in these dramatic times”, so that they can “be firmly rooted in the Gospel.”

“Be an encouragement so that the clergy and religious always open their ears to the cry of their people, admirable for their faith, putting the Gospel before dissension or personal interests,” he added.

Likewise, he pointed out that they are “sowers of hope, witnesses called, in the style of the Gospel, to work with meekness and without clamor, whose work “does not stand out in the eyes of the world, but pleases those of God.”

“Thank you because you respond to those who destroy by rebuilding; to those who deprive dignity by restoring hope; to the tears of children with the smile of those who love; to the evil logic of power with the Christian logic of service,” he then noted.

In this way, Pope Francis assured them that “the seeds you plant in soils contaminated by hatred and war will germinate.”

Enough! Violence will never bring peace

Next, the Holy Father focused on the war in the Holy Land, “where it all began, where the Apostles received the mandate to go around the world to announce the Gospel,” and assured that “the faithful around the world are called to make your closeness felt; and to encourage Christians, there and throughout the Middle East, to be stronger than the temptation to abandon their conflict-torn lands.”

“How much pain war causes, even more strident and absurd in places where the Gospel of peace has been promulgated! To those who feed the spiral of conflict and benefit from it, I repeat: enough! Enough, because violence will never bring peace,” he exclaimed.

Pope Francis assured that “a ceasefire, encounter and dialogue are urgently needed to allow the coexistence of different peoples, the only possible path for a stable future.”

Along these lines, he stressed that “with war, on the other hand, a meaningless and unfinished adventure, no one will win: everyone will be defeated.”

Later, he asked them to listen to “the cries of the young people, of the common people and of the towns, tired of bellicose rhetoric, of the sterile refrains that always blame others, dividing the world into good and bad, of the leaders who fight to sit at a table to find mediations and promote solutions.”

“Let some peace open for this beloved population, let the prisoners of war be released and the children be repatriated. Promoting peace and freeing those imprisoned are distinctive signs of the Christian faith,” he expressed.

Pope Francis also cited displaced Christians in the Karabakh region and pointed out that today, perhaps more than ever, “Christians from the East flee conflicts or emigrate in search of work and better living conditions: many, therefore, “They live in the diaspora.”

“Those who have already had to abandon their land run the risk of also being deprived of their religious identity; and with the passing of generations, the spiritual heritage of the East is lost, an unavoidable wealth for the entire Catholic Church,” he lamented.

For this reason, he thanked the Latin dioceses that welcome the Eastern faithful and invited them to take care of them, “so that these brothers and sisters can keep their rites alive and healthy.”

“I encourage the Dicastery to work on this, also defining principles and norms that help Latin Pastors to support Eastern Catholics in the diaspora,” Pope Francis concluded.