From: The Tablet
by Patrick Hudson
Pope Francis said that Eastern Churches had become “martyr Churches” amid wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
John Adam Fox, chairman of the British charity Fellowship and Aid to the Christians of the East, with Pope Francis during the ROACO plenary.
Vatican Media
Pope Francis urged western dioceses to support Catholics from Eastern Churches to maintain their traditions outside their historic territories.
Addressing the plenary assembly of the Reunion of Aid Agencies for the Oriental Churches (ROACO), the Pope said it was important to “keep the Eastern rites alive and flourishing” outside the territrorium proprium where the Eastern Churches’ hierarchies have direct jurisdiction.
He noted that some of the 23 Eastern Churches in communion with Rome now have more adherents living in Latin-rite dioceses than in their homelands, and said the Dicastery for Oriental Churches should establish “principles and norms that can help Latin bishops support Eastern Catholics living in the diaspora”.
ROACO, founded in 1968 as the Vatican’s humanitarian arm for Eastern Catholics, includes representatives from European and US dioceses and aid agencies. The charity Fellowship and Aid to the Christians of the East (FACE) also took part in the meeting on 24-27 June, the first direct British participation at a plenary.
Delegates discussed conditions for Christians in the Holy Land in one session, with contributions from the Custos of the Holy Land Fr Francesco Patton OFM and from Br Hernan Santos FSC, vice-chancellor of Bethlehem University.
Other sessions addressed the conduct of Vatican diplomacy and conditions in Nagorno-Karabakh, the enclave of Azerbaijan which saw an exodus of Armenian Christians amid fighting in October.
Gevork Saroyan, head of the social service of the Armenian Apostolic Church’s Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, represented the Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II at the meeting.
Pope Francis said that Eastern Churches had become “martyr Churches” amid wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.
“Just as the Lord’s flesh was pierced by nails and a lance, so many Eastern communities are suffering and bleeding because of the conflicts and violence they endure,” he said.
The chairman of FACE John Adam Fox told The Tablet that the number of Eastern Catholics in Britain was nearing 400,000, “and given the current conflicts in the Caucasus, the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Ukraine, that demographic is set to increase exponentially”, requiring stronger pastoral provision.
“It is not appropriate to treat them like Latin-rite ethnic chaplaincies and give them a weekly slot in a local Roman Catholic parish church for the purpose of liturgy in their own respective rite,” he said.
“The Eastern Catholic missions and chaplaincies need their own places of worship and their own community centres.”
He called for the introduction of an “Ordinariate of Eastern Catholic Churches” in Britain, on the model employed in other European countries and in the US.