The Pope is currently negotiating with the Italian authorities to end the regime of financial secrecy and promote transparency. But the reign of terror, unleashed by the IS, is too egregious to be overlooked
There may not be a papal bull for a crusade against the Islamic State as yet, but the Vatican favours a military intervention to prevent the IS from continuing its murderous campaign against Christians and other minor communities in West Asia. “We have to stop this kind of genocide”, said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nation in Geneva. “Otherwise we will be crying out in the future about why we did not do something, why we allowed a terrible tragedy to happen”. Archbishop Tomasi was careful to include Muslim states in the envisaged coalition.
A core group, composed of Russian Federation, Holy See (Vatican) and lebanon, formulated a joint statement “supporting the human rights of Christians and other communities, particularly in the Middle East”. The statement was presented on March 13 during the 28th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council. India was not amongst the nations endorsing the resolution.
Pope Francis is currently cleaning the Augean stables of Vatican’s controversial banking system. Titled ‘Institute for the Works of Religion’, the Vatican Bank (estd 1942) can invite comparison with murky universe of Swiss banks. It is perceived to be a tax haven within the geographical city limits of Rome.
Gerald Posner, an American investigative journalist, has recently unravelled the secretive world of Vatican banking in his book — God’s Bankers: A History and Money and Power at the Vatican. The Pope is currently negotiating with the Italian authorities to end the regime of financial secrecy and promote transparency. But the reign of terror, unleashed by the IS is too egregious to be overlooked.
The IS, comprising extreme Sunni supremacists, was born only last year. But the Christians in the Middle East have been suffering for long. They are in a state of demographic siege amidst the burgeoning Muslim population. The once flourishing Christian community had dwindled away. William Dalrymple witnessed the decrepit state of Christianity when he widely travelled to the region for his book, From the Holy Mountains — A Journey in the shadow of Byzantium.
The lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) was high point of Christian resistance. The Civil War was precipitated by the fact that Christian control was rapidly getting eroded due to the growing Muslim population. The influx of Palestinians, driven by Jordan compounded the trouble. The Christians of lebanon, called Maronites, are Catholics. The Vatican has traditionally been anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. And its sympathy for Palestinian appeared to grow, after Jordan threw Palestine liberation Organisation out of the window, notwithstanding the fact that King Hussein bin Talal was a co-religionist of Yasser Arafat. Arafat with his dirty dozen, tried to expropriate the Hashemite kingdom.
The Christians of lebanon wanted to set their little independent state designated as Petit liban, where they could live without being hounded by the Muslims. But Pope Paul VI refused to read the signs. In his speech to the College of Cardinals on Christmas eve, 1975, he said, “Those who have been able to know and admire at close hand the example of peaceful co-existence given for a long time by the population of lebanon, Christian and Muslim, are led almost naturally to think that the explosion of violent hostilities of which it has become theatre have no adequate explanation other than interference of forces extraneous to lebanon itself…”
Yes, there were extraneous forces apart from the influx of Palestinians whom Vatican has pampered for years. As Brigitte Gabriel, an American journalist says, fighters from different parts of the Middle East poured into lebanon to wagejihad when lebanese Christians hardly knew the meaning of that word. The Vatican was more concerned with justice to Palestinians than the fate of the Christians. This stance of Paul VI, greatly disappointed the Christians who had made up their mind for sovereign little lebanon.
Pope John Paul II’s attitude of enlightened indifference was no less frustrating. Bachir Gemayel (1947-1982), the lebanese Kataeb Party, who was assassinated within three weeks of being elected the President of war-torn lebanon, had made no secret of his disgust with John Paul II. Bachir in a pre-election speech said, “The Vatican should understand that Christians in lebanon are not guinea pigs for the Christian-Islamic dialogue in the world.”
The current Pope takes his official name from Saint Francis of Assisi (1181-1226). Saint Francis animated with humanism. All instincts towards Renaissance in Italy could be traced to humanistic philosophy. He used to preach to birds, and speak to the flowers. During the fifth Crusade (1215-1221) he had sailed to Egypt where at Damietta (1219) he had tried to covert Sultan Al-Kamil to Christianity. He felt that a change of Sultan’s heart would change the destiny of Christendom. But even Saint Francis failed to change the heart of Al-Kamil.
The denominations in the near East viz, Nestorians, Jacobite, Copts, who were historically alienated by the Orthodox Church (Byzantine Empire), which in turn was alienated by the Roman Catholic Church, had suffered neglect and oblivion for centuries. But, has not India also turned a blind eye to the terrible plight of the Yazidis — a miniscule community in Iraq’s Sinjar mountains derogated as ‘devil-worshipper’IJ The Yazidis follow a mode of worship that resembles Hindu traditions.They have been enslaved, tortured, raped and killed by the IS fighters. But we have chosen to remain silent and fail them.