ME Council of Churches meeting to take place in Cyprus
By Argyro Nicolaou
24/8/2011
THE GENERAL Assembly of the Middle Eastern Church Council will take place in Cyprus late in November, Archbishop Chrysostomos announced yesterday.
He announced the event following a three-hour long meeting he had with the Lutheran Bishop Munib Yunan, the representative of the Armenian Patriarch of Cilicia Aram, the Maronite Bishop Bulosh Matar and the Jerusalem Patriarch Theophilos.
The Jerusalem Patriarch, who also chairs the Council, thanked Archbishop Chrysostomos and the Church of Cyprus for their willingness to host the General Assembly, and said the church leaders also discussed other ways in which the Middle Eastern Church Council could be active in the area.
Theophilos said that the Middle East was undergoing dramatic changes both socially and politically, and that the role of the Churches was extremely important in retaining a balance on a religious and socio-political level. “Christians play a very important role [in the Middle East] because their presence there contributes in the effort of allaying religious fanaticism and in the coexistence of different religious cultures,” he said.
Asked about the situation of Orthodox Christians in Syria, Theophilos said that the circumstances were worrying for everyone, particularly because there were so many of them in the country.
Chrysostomos said that the issue of Christians’ survival in the Middle East has been on the table for a while now, and expressed the conviction that the discussion would be carried further during his meeting with the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul on September 1.
“We will definitely approach and present different institutions, such as the United Nations and the European Union, with the problems of Middle Eastern countries and their Churches, and I believe that together we will be able to contribute to the building of peace in the area,” Chrysostomos added.
