Pope urges Middle East Christians to persevere in faith

POPE BENEDICT XVI urged Middle East Christians yesterday to persevere in their faith despite hardships threatening their ancient communities, addressing a crowd of 20,000 people who filled a sports stadium where he celebrated the first open-air Mass of his Holy Land pilgrimage.

The Pope was welcomed at the stadium in Arabic by the Latin rite patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Fouad Twal, who recalled that Jordan has taken in more than one million Iraqi refugees since the start of the war, some 40,000 of them Christians. According to Vatican statistics, Christians are less than 2% of Jordan’s overwhelmingly Muslim population.

“The Catholic community here is deeply touched by the difficulties and uncertainties which affect the people of the Middle East,” Pope Benedict said, speaking in English at the Mass.