Times Minute | Pope Visits the Holy Land
Pope
Francis embarks on a three-day trip to the Middle East. Jodi Rudoren,
the Times’s Bureau chief, on what to watch from the visit.
While I was in Rome last month and engaged in heavy discussion with prominent political and religious leaders, the dramatic decline in the Christian population in the Holy Land emerged as a major topic. Some people were surprised to hear about the incredibly large number of Catholics who have been driven out over the last few decades.
A leading Catholic official who will accompany Pope Francis this weekend to the Holy Land said the pontiff is deeply troubled about the forced exodus of millions of Catholics and other Christians from the region.
And he feels politically powerless to do much about it because of the apathy and the lack of political will by the international community.
The war between Israel and Palestine has been the main culprit in driving Christians from their own country, my diplomatic and historian friends told me. Christians once comprised more than 10 percent of the population, but today that percentage is down to a mere 2 percent.
One top Vatican official told me, “Violence against Catholics in the Middle East is horrendous. Do people in the United States know this? Or maybe it’s of no concern to your government.”
I was told that Pope Francis will talk to victims of the violence and chaos, but I’m not hopeful that he will get much support from the international community. And that’s a shame.
If this hatred were directed against any other religious group, the world community would demand action by political leaders. But Christians get no support from the U.N. or the United States. In fact, there seems to be a world news blackout in this war on Christians. It’s almost as if everyone is afraid to tell what is going on. This is what happened in Germany in the 1930s.
Pope Francis may be the only person on the planet who can alert the world to this tragic, untold story in the Holy Land. Here’s hoping political leaders and regular folks heed his words.
Raymond L. Flynn is a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and a former mayor of Boston.
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