Al-Rahi to Travel with Pope Francis to Holy Land in May
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi will travel to the Holly Land next month along with the delegation accompanying Pope Francis, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Bishop Boulos Sayyah, who will be accompanying al-Rahi in his trip, told the newspaper that the Patriarch will be within the delegation traveling with the Pontiff.
“There is a Maronite parish in Palestine that is worth visiting,” Sayyah told the daily.
The pope announced in January a three-day visit to Amman, Bethlehem and Jerusalem from May 24 to 26.
Asked about objections voiced by several officials over the visit, Sayyah considered it “a pastoral visit,” saying: “Al-Rahi isn't traveling there for a political reason or to normalize ties with Israel.”
“Any Christian in the Middle East has the right to visit the Holy Land.”
Head of Archbishops of Haifa and the Holy Land Maronite Bishop Mousa al-Hajj told al-Joumhouria that there are around 7,500 Maronites in the Holy Land and around 2,500 Lebanese, who were obliged to leave their country in the year 2000.
“Al-Rahi's visit will be merely pastoral... It's a sign of hope... We are all waiting for him,” al-Hajj continued.
Political sources told al-Joumhouria that al-Rahi had planned for this visit since he succeeded Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir in March 2011.
H.K.
G.K.
29 April 2014, 10:53
00
Why don't these Lebanese come back to Lebanon that left in 2000 ?
29 April 2014, 15:39
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because hezbollah will kill them for defending their homes. Ironically, one of the only non sectarian groups fighting for their homes in Lebanon was made to be the most demonized by the iranian militia.
29 April 2014, 15:51
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Many of them if not all were part of the SLA and they worry that they will be arrested and tried for treason. To be honest the ones that did not flee were tried for treason and a third of them got sentences that were a month in prison and another third less than a year in prison. Only very few got life in prison. Technically they can return if they want to.
29 April 2014, 13:42
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Yalla, where is Mystic, FT, Mowaten, Southern and Roar to call him a Zionist cannibal collaborator ?
29 April 2014, 16:19
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Many Lebanese visited Israel and many Israelis visited Lebanon. Check their blogs online. :)
29 April 2014, 20:55
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I could not find the blog anymore.
There was an article by Michael J. Totten on an Israeli soldier who fought in 2006 war and his tank got burnt and managed to flee to Israel. He came back to Lebanon months later via Amman on a Canadian passport and told his stories with pictures.
There are also two other Israeli reporters (boy and girl) who lived in Gemayze and Hamra a couple of years back and came to Lebanon using foreign passports as well. They mostly talked on how nice the night life is in Lebanon and how nice the Lebanese people are and they were surprised because that's not what they had expected when they first came here.
