A JUST AND LASTING PEACE FOR THE MIDDLE EAST

VATICAN CITY, DEC 11, 2001 (VIS) - The Holy Father received this morning the pastors of the Chaldean Church in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Turkey and the United States, accompanied by their Patriarch, His Beatitude Raphael I Bidawid, upon the conclusion of their "ad limina" visit.

Speaking to them in French, John Paul II made an appeal to the leaders of nations "to work for the establishment of a just and lasting peace in (the Middle East) region of the world and for a stop to all attacks on the security of persons amd the good of peoples."

The Pope underscored that the bishop is "the servant of unity when he applies himself to supporting priests, his collaborators" and "when, with his brother bishops of the same region or the same rite, or different rites, he strives to develop collaborations and to discern the signs of the times."

"I ask you," he continued, "to be especially attentive to the structures of communion within your patriarchal Church. ... In the name of the Lord, I exhort you to overcome every partisan spirit to join together ever more strongly your forces. May all this take place in fraternal frankness so that you may ceaselessly seek the Lord's will and that personal interest never obscure the pastoral service with which you are entrusted."

John Paul II concluded by referring to "the pastoral urgency of your faithful in the diaspora." He stressed "the serious difficulty of the phenomenon of emigration" which is "even more accented by the economic sanctions against Iraq. You can only face this drama collegially, in the conviction that the future of the Chaldean Church is also played out in the diaspora."

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