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| Patriarch Ra'i and Assad representative embrace |
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| George Sabra in Azaz |
Lebanon’s
Cardinal Bechara Boutros ar-Ra'i has been itching for nearly two years to become the first
Maronite patriarch to visit Syria since Lebanon’s independence in 1943.
He
did it this weekend.
Syria’s
ambassador in Beirut, Ali Abdulkarim Ali, officially invited Ra’i to visit Syria
in the week he was elected the 77th patriarch of Lebanon’s Maronites
on the day the Syrian uprising broke out in mid-March 2011.
Ra’i,
who has since been appointed cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI, entered Syria yesterday
through the Masnaa border crossing.
He
arrived in Damascus amid tight security measures to attend a ceremony marking
the enthronement of the new patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church.
He
held a mass at the Maronite Cathedral of St. Anthony in the Bab Touma district
of the Syrian capital soon after arriving in the war-ravaged country.
Representing President
Bashar al-Assad, Joseph Suweid, a Christian minister of state belonging to the Syrian
Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), welcomed him with open arms and a warm embrace
in the cathedral’s entrance hall.
Although his aides said
there was no political dimension to the visit, Ra’i told the congregation in a
short sermon preceding the mass, “We pray each day for the birth of a new society
and a new state fulfilling all our good people’s hopes.
“From
here in Damascus, we join you in telling all those engaging in these tragedies:
enough warfare, violence, killings and destruction of homes and landmarks.
“They
say it’s for reforms’ sake. Reforms are needed in every state and homeland. But
outsiders don’t dictate reforms. Reforms are homegrown to fit each country’s
particular needs. No one knows a home better than its dwellers.”
Later
Saturday night, Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told state-run TV,
“The visit of Maronite Patriarch Beshara Ra’i to Syria has religious as well as
political connotations.”
This
Sunday morning, Ra’i attended the enthronement of Syria's Greek Orthodox
leader, Yuhanna X Yazigi, at the Church of the Holy Cross in Qassaa, a central Damascus
neighborhood.
Yazigi,
bishop of Western and Central Europe, was elected Greek Orthodox patriarch of
the Levant and Antioch, succeeding Patriarch Hazim Ignatius IV who died in
December 2012.
Lebanese Maronites
allied with Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which is supported by Syria and
Iran, are hailing the trip by Ra’i to Syria as a shield for Christians.
Other Lebanese Maronite
Christians, allied with former premier Saad Hariri, have expressed their misgivings.
“Here is Patriarch Ra’i
in Assad’s Syria, the Syria of a child-killer regime, revealing his true colors
under the pretext of participating in the enthronement of Greek Orthodox
Patriarch Yuhanna X Yazigi. The pretext does not in any way hide the fact that he
empathizes with Assad’s course of action,” Elias
Bejjani writes in a commentary for Cedar News.
On his first visit to
France in September 2011, Ra’i urged that Assad be given a chance to implement
reforms because he is “open-minded” and “ cannot work miracles.”
He also indirectly
defended Hezbollah’s arms by linking the party’s arsenal to Israel’s exit from Lebanon’s
Shebaa Farms and the repatriation of Palestinian refugees.
Two months later, he
defended Hezbollah suspects who were indicted in the assassination of former Prime
Minister Rafik Hariri by the UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).
In an interview with Reuters on 4 March 2012, Ra’i said,
"All regimes in the Arab world have Islam as a state religion, except for
Syria. It stands out for not saying it is an Islamic state... The closest thing
to democracy [in the Arab world] is Syria.”
Three weeks ago, he
said in his Sunday sermon at the seat of the Maronite patriarchate in Bkerke that Lebanon
should lobby the international community to offload its Syrian refugees into
“safe areas” in Syria and other Arab countries.
In his book, Le Tsunami Arabe, Franco-Lebanese author
Antoine Basbous suggests Ra’i’s public endorsement of the Assad
regime is a likely result of the patriarch being blackmailed by Damascus (see “The
Ra’i rumor tells us little”).
In the other Syrian corner
sits another Christian, this one a native Syrian born to a Christian family in
the city of Qatana in Rif Dimashq Governorate.
He is George Sabra,
head of the Syrian National Council and second-in-command of the Syrian
National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (see my post, “Syrian opposition
elects Christian leader”).
While Damascus was
welcoming Ra’i, Sabra was concluding the first tour by a Syrian National
Coalition leader of areas in Aleppo and Idlib governorates held by the Free
Syrian Army (FSA).
A short video posted
by activists on YouTube showed scrutinizing photo murals of the uprising in the
small town of Azaz close to
Aleppo after coming through the opposition-held Bab al-Hawa
international border crossing between Turkey and Syria.
