The Church in the Middle East (From the Origins to the Present Day)

Jerusalem, the Mother Church

Everything begins in Jerusalem. It is there that, according to the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost, and that Peter delivered the first Christian preaching. The primitive community, presided over by James called "brother of the Lord", regarded by the Fathers as the first bishop of the city and martyred around 62–63, made Jerusalem the "Mother of all the Churches"^[6]. After the destruction of the Temple in 70, tradition reports that the Christians took refuge at Pella, in Transjordan^[7].

Jerusalem was only raised late to the rank of patriarchate: its ecclesiastical autonomy, detached from Antioch, was recognised by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the patriarchal title being formalised under Justinian in the 6th century^[8]. But its spiritual primacy of honour, as the place of the Cross and the Resurrection, was never contested.

Antioch, Where Men Were First Called "Christians"

The great Christian metropolis of the ancient East was Antioch, on the Orontes (today Antakya, in Turkey). Founded by disciples driven out of Jerusalem after the martyrdom of Stephen, who began preaching to the pagans^[9], the Church of Antioch received Barnabas and then Paul of Tarsus, who worked there for a whole year. Peter himself came there, probably around the year 44 according to the traditional chronology, which makes Antioch an apostolic see of the first rank^[10]. It was there that the decisive word was spoken:

"And in Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians." — Acts of the Apostles 11:26^[11]

After the fall of Jerusalem in 70, Antioch became the metropolis of Christianity in the East; the Council of Nicaea (325) confirmed, through its canon 6, the maintenance of its existing prerogatives over the Churches of its jurisdiction^[12]. It was also at Antioch that there appeared, around the year 107, from the pen of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, the very first written attestation of the expression "Catholic Church":

"Wherever the bishop appears, there let the people be; as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church." — Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, VIII^[13]

From Antioch would come two of the greatest doctors of Christendom: Saint John Chrysostom, born around 347, priest of Antioch before being called to Constantinople in 397 and consecrated archbishop in 398, surnamed Chrysostom — "Golden Mouth" — for his unequalled eloquence^[14]; and the whole Antiochian exegetical school, attentive to the literal and historical sense of Scripture.

Edessa, Mesopotamia and Syriac Christianity

To the east of the Roman Empire, in the buffer zone with Persia, there arose a Christianity of Syriac language — a dialect of Aramaic, the very language of Christ. Its centre was Edessa (today Şanlıurfa). The Syriac tradition, collected in the Doctrine of Addai, reports that the apostle Thomas sent his disciple Addai (identified with Thaddeus) to evangelise King Abgar V of Edessa; these accounts, which blend history and hagiography, express the very ancient consciousness of an apostolic foundation of the Mesopotamian Church^[15].

From Edessa, the Gospel reached Nisibis, Arbela and Seleucia-Ctesiphon, capital of the Persian Empire. The schools of Edessa and Nisibis became two of the great intellectual centres of the Syriac world^[16]. It was there that Saint Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306–373) shone, deacon, the greatest poet and hymnographer of the Christian East, surnamed "the Harp of the Holy Spirit", proclaimed Doctor of the Church in 1920 by Benedict XV^[17]. This Syriac Christianity would become prodigiously missionary: it would reach India, Central Asia, and as far as Tang-dynasty China.

Alexandria: The School and the Desert

The third great centre was Alexandria in Egypt. Coptic tradition sees there the foundation of Saint Mark the Evangelist^[18]. The city housed one of the oldest known catechetical schools, the Didaskaleion, illustrated by Clement of Alexandria and then by Origen, the most powerful exegete of the 3rd century^[19]. Above all, it was in the deserts of Egypt that Christian monasticism was born: Saint Anthony the Great (c. 251–356) organised the eremitical life, Saint Pachomius invented communal cenobitic life. From there, the monastic ideal spread throughout all Christendom, in East as in West.

The Eastern Fathers and the Pentarchy

In the 4th and 5th centuries, the Near East was the beating heart of theology. The great ecumenical councils were held there — Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451) — all on Eastern soil. Ancient Christendom organised itself around five patriarchal sees, the Pentarchy: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem. Three of these five sees — Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem — are in the Middle East. This theory, formalised by Emperor Justinian (Novel 131) and endorsed by the council in Trullo in 692, expresses a Christendom whose centre of gravity then remained resolutely Eastern^[20].

The disputes over the person of Christ — how to reconcile his divinity and his humanity — would, in the 5th century, durably fracture Eastern Christianity into several ecclesial families which subsist to this day. Understanding this confessional geography is indispensable for grasping the present situation.

The Council of Ephesus (431) and the Church of the East

The Council of Ephesus, the third ecumenical council, was held from 22 June to 31 July 431. Presided over by Cyril of Alexandria, it condemned Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who refused to call Mary Theotokos — "Mother of God" — preferring Christotokos — "Mother of Christ". The council solemnly proclaimed Mary Theotokos, thus affirming the unity of the person of Christ, true God and true man^[21].

Part of the Persian Church, attached to the Antiochian theological tradition and outside the Roman Empire, refused to receive Ephesus. Thus was born the Church of the East — long called by convention "Nestorian", a term today judged improper by historians^[22]. Far from being marginal, this Church was one of the most missionary in history: it evangelised Persia, Central Asia, India — the Saint Thomas Christians —, and China, where the Xi'an Stele, engraved in Chinese and Syriac and erected in 781, attests a Christian mission as early as 635^[23].

The Council of Chalcedon (451) and the Non-Chalcedonian Churches

Twenty years later, the Council of Chalcedon (451), the fourth ecumenical council, stated the christological formula of reference: Christ is "acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation", concurring "in one person and one hypostasis"^[24].

"One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." — Definition of faith of the Council of Chalcedon, 451^[25]

But a considerable part of the East — Coptic Egypt, a large portion of Syria, Armenia — rejected Chalcedon, judging that speaking of "two natures" amounted to dividing Christ. From this refusal were born the Eastern Orthodox Churches: the Coptic Church of Egypt, the Syriac Orthodox Church (called "Jacobite", after Bishop Jacob Baradaeus who restored its hierarchy in the 6th century), the Armenian Apostolic Church, to which are added the Ethiopian, Eritrean and Malankara Churches^[26]. Those who, on the contrary, remained faithful to Chalcedon and to the Byzantine emperor were called by their adversaries Melkites — from the Syriac malkā, "king": literally "the royalists", "those of the emperor"^[27].

"Monophysites" or Miaphysites? A Decisive Clarification

For centuries, these Churches were labelled "Monophysites", that is, holders of a single nature (that of the heretic Eutyches, who absorbed the humanity of Christ into his divinity). Modern research has shown that this label is inaccurate. These Churches reject both Nestorius and Eutyches; they profess a so-called Miaphysite christology, in which the divine and human natures are united "in one incarnate nature" without confusion or absorption. The difference with Chalcedon was largely a matter of vocabulary and of political distrust towards Constantinople^[28].

The Catholic Church officially recognised this convergence through two historic common Christological declarations. With the Coptic Church first:

"We confess that our Lord and God and Saviour and King of us all, Jesus Christ, is perfect God with respect to His divinity, perfect man with respect to His humanity. In Him, His divinity is united with His humanity in a real, perfect union without mingling, without commixtion, without confusion, without alteration." — Joint Declaration of Paul VI and the Coptic Pope Shenouda III, 10 May 1973^[29]

Then with the Syriac Orthodox Church:

"The confusions and schisms that occurred between their Churches in the later centuries... in no way affect or touch the substance of their faith." — Joint Declaration of John Paul II and Patriarch Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, 23 June 1984^[30]

An Ecclesial Mosaic on the Eve of Islam

At the dawn of the 7th century, the Christian Near East was therefore deeply divided: Chalcedonians (Melkites) faithful to Byzantium; non-Chalcedonians (Copts, Syriacs, Armenians); the Church of the East in Persian territory. This fragmentation, partly nourished by rivalries between Constantinople and regional identities, would weaken the region's resistance to the Arab conquest — an interpretation widely supported by historians, without exhausting the causes of the Byzantine collapse^[31].

The Arab-Muslim Conquest (635–642)

Within a single generation, the Arab armies coming out of Arabia conquered most of the Christian Near East: Damascus capitulated in 635, Jerusalem in 637 or 638, Alexandria in 641^[32]. Overnight, the majority of Eastern Christians passed under Muslim domination — a domination which would last, for most of them, until today.

Dhimmi Status and the Jizya Tax

According to the historiography of classical Islamic law, Christians, like Jews, were recognised as "People of the Book" and placed under dhimmi status: a pact of protection (dhimma) guaranteed them, in principle, "the security of life, liberty, and property" and the right to practise their worship, but at the price of a capitation tax, the jizya, and numerous legal and social restrictions — prohibition on building new churches, on bearing arms, on testifying against a Muslim, distinctive dress^[33]. The Pact of Umar, attributed to the conquest of the Levant, codified this status, which acquired canonical value in Islamic jurisprudence^[34].

Dhimmi status was not a permanent persecution — it knew periods of relative tolerance and of brilliant Christian contribution to Arab civilisation (medicine, philosophy, translation of the Greeks). But it instituted a structural legal inferiority which, in stages over several centuries, eroded the communities: interested conversions, marriages, fiscal pressures, humiliations, emigration. According to fragile historiographical estimates, to be handled with caution, Christians still formed about 60% of the population in the 9th century, before gradually becoming a minority^[35].

Saint John Damascene, Last Greek Father at the Caliph's Court

Symbol of this first coexistence, Saint John Damascene (c. 676–749) belonged to a great Christian family of Damascus whose father managed the finances of the Umayyad Caliphate; John succeeded him in this office before leaving everything for the monastery of Saint Sabas, near Jerusalem. Theologian of images against Byzantine iconoclasm, he is considered the last of the Greek Fathers of the Church^[36] — proof that at the very heart of nascent Islam, Eastern Christian thought retained intact vigour.

The Crusades: A Latin Interlude

Between 1095 and 1291, the Crusades established ephemeral Latin states in the Holy Land and a Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. This period, marked by lasting misunderstandings between Latins and Eastern Christians but also by rapprochements — notably with the Maronites of Lebanon —, is treated in detail in the articles devoted to the Crusades and the First Crusade. After the fall of Acre in 1291, the Latin East disappeared, and local Christians found themselves alone facing Muslim powers.

From the late Middle Ages onwards, and especially in the 16th–18th centuries, portions of each Eastern Church restored full communion with Rome, while retaining their own liturgy, law and hierarchy: these are the Eastern Catholic Churches, treated in detail in the article the Eastern Catholic Churches. Six of them are rooted in the Middle East.

The Maronites of Lebanon

The Maronites, who take their name from Saint Maron, Syrian hermit of the turn of the 4th–5th centuries, are the only Eastern Church to affirm an unbroken fidelity to Rome. Sheltered in the mountains of Lebanon, they renewed close ties with the papacy at the time of the Crusades: the Maronite patriarch sought union as early as 1182, and Patriarch Jeremias Al-Amshitti was the first to travel to Rome, at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). The union was definitively consolidated in the 16th century, crowned by the foundation of the Maronite College of Rome by Gregory XIII in 1584^[37]. The Maronites remain today the bedrock of Lebanese Christianity.

The Chaldean Catholics (1553–1830)

From the Church of the East there broke away, in 1553, a branch which entered into communion with Rome: Yohannan Soulaqa was ordained by Pope Julius III and recognised as patriarch. After vicissitudes of nearly three centuries, Rome confirmed in 1830 Yohannan VIII Hormizd as Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, with see at Mosul^[38]. The Chaldean Catholics have since been the principal Christian community of Iraq.

The Greek-Melkite Catholics (1724)

In 1724, at Damascus, the election of Patriarch Cyril VI Tanas provoked a split in the Melkite Patriarchate of Antioch: one part entered into communion with Rome — the Greek-Melkite Catholic Church —, the other remaining Orthodox. Rome formally confirmed the union in 1730^[39]. Present in Syria, Lebanon and Galilee, the Melkite Catholics are important artisans of dialogue between East and West.

Syriac, Coptic and Armenian Catholics

Three other unions complete the mosaic:

• The Syriac Catholic Church: in 1782, Michael Jarweh, Metropolitan of Aleppo, declared himself Catholic and founded the unbroken patriarchal line, sheltered at the monastery of Charfet (Lebanon)^[40].
• The Coptic Catholic Church: after a first vicariate as early as 1741, the Coptic Catholic Patriarchate of Alexandria was restored by Leo XIII in 1895^[41].
• The Armenian Catholic Church: the Patriarchate of Cilicia of the Armenians was established by Abraham Peter I Ardzivian, ratified by Benedict XIV in 1742^[42].

The Ottoman Millet System

Under the Ottoman Empire, Christian communities were organised into millets — "nations" founded on religious confession. The Rûm millet, grouping the Orthodox, was led by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, erected as millet-bashi after the capture of the city in 1453: he administered, taxed and judged Christians in matters of marriage, inheritance and civil status^[43]. This system gave the Churches real communal autonomy, but also froze their status as tolerated and watched minorities.

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem Restored (1847)

In the 19th century, Rome's attention to the East revived. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, a merely titular see since 1374, was restored as a residential see by Pius IX on 23 July 1847, by the apostolic letter Nulla Celebrior; Mgr Joseph Valerga became its first resident patriarch^[44]. This was the return of a structured Latin Catholic presence in the Holy Land.

Leo XIII and Orientalium Dignitas (1894)

The great magisterial act of this revival was the apostolic letter Orientalium Dignitas, of Leo XIII, dated 30 November 1894. It forbade Latin missionaries to "Latinise" Eastern Catholics and affirmed the eminent dignity of their own traditions^[45]:

"Their antiquity is august, it is she who gives nobility to the different rites, it is a brilliant jewel for the whole Church, it confirms the God-given unity of the Catholic Faith." — Leo XIII, Orientalium Dignitas, 30 November 1894^[46]

The end of the Ottoman Empire was, for Eastern Christians, a catastrophe without precedent. Within a few years, communities fifteen centuries old were largely annihilated in Anatolia and Mesopotamia.

The Armenian Genocide (1915)

The Armenian genocide begins symbolically on 24 April 1915, when the Young Turk power arrested in Constantinople several hundred Armenian intellectuals and notables. There followed mass deportations, death marches towards the Syrian desert, massacres. Estimates vary according to sources, from about 600,000 to 1.5 million victims, the latter figure being that of Armenian memory and of pontifical declarations^[47]. The Armenians were a Christian people — Apostolic in majority, but also Catholic and Protestant.

The Catholic Church solemnly recognised this tragedy. John Paul II, in a joint declaration signed in Armenia with Catholicos Karekin II on 27 September 2001, speaks of "the extermination of a million and a half Armenian Christians, in what is generally referred to as the first genocide of the twentieth century"^[48]. Fourteen years later, Pope Francis took up the expression during a Mass at Saint Peter's for the centenary:

"The first [of these great scourges], which is widely considered 'the first genocide of the twentieth century', struck your own Armenian people, the first Christian nation, as well as Catholic and Orthodox Syrians, Assyrians, Chaldeans and Greeks." — Pope Francis, homily of the Mass in the Armenian rite, 12 April 2015^[49]

The Sayfo, Genocide of the Syriacs and Assyrians

In parallel, the Syriac, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians of the Ottoman Empire were victims of the Sayfo — a Syriac word meaning "the sword". Its deadliest phase occurred in 1915. Estimates, highly uncertain for lack of reliable censuses, range from about 250,000 to 300,000 dead, nearly half of the population concerned — some sources advancing even higher figures^[50].

The Greek Genocide and the Population Exchange

The Orthodox Greeks of Anatolia, notably those of Pontus, in turn suffered systematic destruction between 1914 and 1922, with estimates ranging from about 300,000 to 900,000 victims according to the definitions adopted^[51]. The process was completed by the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, signed at Lausanne on 30 January 1923: about 1.5 million Orthodox Greeks were transferred to Greece and about 400,000 Muslims to Turkey — the first forced population exchange of modern history, founded on the sole criterion of religion^[52].

The End of Anatolian Christianity

The combined effect of the genocides and the 1923 exchange was the almost total erasure of Christianity in Asia Minor, a land evangelised from the apostolic age, home of the seven Churches of the Apocalypse and site of the first councils. Within a decade, what had been a major centre of Christendom became an almost entirely Muslim land.

Greater Lebanon, Christian Refuge (1920)

Conversely, the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire offered Christians a political sanctuary. Under French mandate, General Gouraud proclaimed on 1 September 1920 the State of Greater Lebanon, conceived as a safe homeland for the Maronites of Mount Lebanon^[53]. Lebanon thus became the only country in the Near East where Christians would retain major political weight — a fragile balance which still structures the country.

Vatican II and "the Two Lungs" of the Church

The Second Vatican Council devoted an entire decree to Easterners, Orientalium Ecclesiarum (21 November 1964), which recognises the equal dignity of the Eastern Catholic Churches and their right to preserve their own traditions^[54]. John Paul II would extend this doctrine in his apostolic letter Orientale Lumen (2 May 1995), popularising the image according to which the Church must "breathe with her two lungs", the Eastern and the Western^[55].

John Paul II in the Holy Land and at Damascus

The pontificate of John Paul II was punctuated by gestures towards the East: the jubilee pilgrimage to the Holy Land in March 2000, then, in May 2001, the visit to Damascus, where he became the first pope to enter a mosque, that of the Umayyads, which houses the venerated tomb of Saint John the Baptist:

"[May we] present our two important religious communities as communities committed to respectful dialogue, and never again as communities in conflict." — John Paul II, Umayyad Grand Mosque, Damascus, 6 May 2001^[56]

The 2010 Synod and Ecclesia in Medio Oriente (2012)

Faced with the Christian haemorrhage, Benedict XVI convened in October 2010 a Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops. He signed its post-synodal exhortation, Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, in Lebanon on 14 September 2012. The document, placed under the theme "communion and witness", recalls the historic rootedness of Christians and the decisive issue of their continued presence:

"A Middle East without Christians, or with only a few of them, is no longer the Middle East, for Christians participate with the other believers in the region's very particular identity." — Benedict XVI, Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, § 31^[57]

"Without communion there can be no witness: the great witness is precisely the life of communion." — Benedict XVI, Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, § 37^[58]

In it Benedict XVI also defends religious freedom as "the summit of all freedoms [...], a sacred and inalienable right"^[59], and stresses that the Christian presence in the Middle East "is neither new nor accidental, but historic"^[60].

A Presence in Free Fall

The demographic observation is dramatic. Christians, who formed between 13 and 20% of the population of the Middle East in the strict sense at the beginning of the 20th century^[61], now represent only about 5% within that same area (3% within the broader Middle East–North Africa area)^[62][63]. According to the Pew Research Center, Christians accounted for only 3% of the population of the Middle East–North Africa region in 2020, about 13 million people, in continuous decline under the effect of emigration, lower birth rates and an ageing population^[64]. Country by country, the picture is one of unequal but general collapse.

Lebanon, the Last Balance

Lebanon remains the only country in the region where Christians — Maronites foremost — form a major share of the population, estimated at about one third, with no official census since 1932 so as not to rekindle confessional tensions^[65]. By political convention, the Presidency of the Republic goes to a Maronite. The current Maronite Patriarch, Béchara Boutros Raï, created cardinal by Benedict XVI in 2012, is a listened-to voice of the Near East^[66].

Iraq: Mosul, the Nineveh Plain and the Islamic State (2014)

Nowhere has the collapse been as brutal as in Iraq. The community, mostly Chaldean Catholic, numbered about 1.4 million faithful in 1987; it has fallen, after the 2003 war and the violence that followed, to fewer than 250,000 according to most Churches^[67]. The hardest blow came in summer 2014: on 10 June 2014, the Islamic State seized Mosul, then the whole Nineveh Plain. Christian houses were marked with the Arabic letter ن (nun), for "Nazarene". Ordered to convert, pay the jizya or flee, all Christians left Mosul — a first in the sixteen centuries of Christian history of the city, as the then Chaldean Patriarch, Cardinal Louis Raphaël I Sako, stressed^[68]. The Nineveh Plain was liberated in 2017, but returns remain partial.

Martyred Syria

In Syria, the civil war opened in 2011 melted a community of about 1.5 million Christians to some 300,000^[69]. The most emblematic tragedy remains the kidnapping, on 22 April 2013, of the two Archbishops of Aleppo — Mgr Boulos Yazigi, Greek Orthodox, and Mgr Yohanna Ibrahim, Syriac Orthodox —, of whom there is still no news^[70]. The Jesuit Paolo Dall'Oglio, tireless artisan of dialogue, disappeared at Raqqa in July 2013. At Maaloula, one of the last villages where Aramaic, the language of Christ, is still spoken, the fighting of 2013 wounded the living memory of Eastern Christianity.

The Copts of Egypt and the 21 Martyrs of Libya

Egypt is home to the largest Christian community of the Middle East: the Copts, about 10% of the population, in immense majority Orthodox, under the leadership of Pope Tawadros II, with a small Coptic Catholic Church^[71]. This community paid a heavy tribute to terrorism: the bombing of Saint Mark's Cathedral in Cairo (December 2016, 29 dead), the twin Palm Sunday 2017 bombings at Tanta and Alexandria (at least 43 dead)^[72].

These acts of violence have precedents: in the second half of June 1981, Zaouia-el-Hamra, a suburb of Cairo near Choubra, was the scene of a sectarian massacre. Jean-Pierre Péroncel-Hugoz, correspondent of Le Monde in Cairo, gives an account of it in Le radeau de Mahomet, cited by François Brune: the clashes resumed over three or four days, while the law-enforcement forces present remained inactive^[73]. He describes flats set on fire upon their Christian occupants and churches destroyed, but leaves undetermined what triggered the violence: "No one will ever know who started it, nor how, nor why", nor whether the first incidents had caused deaths or only injuries^[74].

It was in Egypt too that one of the most striking testimonies of contemporary martyrdom was born. On 15 February 2015, the Islamic State broadcast the video of the beheading, on a beach in Libya, of 21 Christian workers — twenty Egyptian Copts and one Ghanaian —, killed in hatred of the faith, several dying with the name of Jesus on their lips. In an unprecedented ecumenical gesture, Pope Francis decided in May 2023 to inscribe these 21 Coptic martyrs in the Roman Martyrology, recognising them as witnesses of Christ venerated by the whole Church^[75].

The Holy Land and Turkey

In the Holy Land, Christians now represent only about 1 to 2% of the population, and emigration is gradually emptying Jerusalem and Bethlehem — the latter down from 86% Christians in 1950 to about 10% at the last census (2017)^[76]. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem maintains an active presence there under the leadership of Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, patriarch since 2020, first resident cardinal in Jerusalem (2023)^[77]. In Turkey, lastly, Christianity has almost disappeared — less than 0.2% of the population —, and the reconversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque on 24 July 2020 was felt as a painful symbol. The country also saw the assassination of Father Andrea Santoro, shot in prayer at Trabzon in 2006, and of Mgr Luigi Padovese, Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia, killed in 2010^[78].

The Journey to Iraq (2021)

From 5 to 8 March 2021, Pope Francis became the first pope in history to travel to Iraq, to the very heart of the land of Abraham and of martyred Christians. He met the great Shiite Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani at Najaf, presided over an interreligious prayer in the plain of Ur of the Chaldeans, celebrated Mass at Erbil, and prayed amid the destroyed churches of Mosul. At Baghdad, he paid tribute to the community:

"The very ancient presence of Christians on this land and their contribution to the life of the country constitute a rich heritage which seeks to continue in the service of all." — Pope Francis, address to the authorities, Baghdad, 5 March 2021^[79]

Before the ruins of Mosul, he launched an appeal that has remained famous:

"If God is the God of peace — and He is —, we are not allowed to wage war in His name. [...] Fraternity is stronger than fratricide, hope is stronger than death." — Pope Francis, prayer for the victims of war, Mosul, 7 March 2021^[80]

Abu Dhabi and Human Fraternity (2019)

Two years earlier, on 4 February 2019, Francis had signed at Abu Dhabi, with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together — a text unprecedented in relations between Catholicism and Sunni Islam, affirming the common dignity of persons and condemning violence in the name of God^[81].

The Ecumenism of Blood

From these tragedies, Francis drew a profound spiritual intuition, the "ecumenism of blood": Christians of all confessions — Catholics, Orthodox, Copts, Syriacs — who die together for the name of Christ are already united in martyrdom, beyond historic divisions.

"[Those who], in confessing Jesus Christ the Lord, have realised the ecumenism of blood." — Pope Francis, address to a delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, 28 June 2014^[82]

The 21 Coptic martyrs of Libya, inscribed in the Roman Martyrology though they were not Catholics, are the most perfect expression of this ecumenism of blood.

The issue, for the Church, is not only humanitarian or patrimonial: it is theological. Eastern Christians are not a picturesque survival, but the direct heirs of the apostolic Churches, depositaries of liturgies, languages and spiritual traditions which the West has often forgotten. Their disappearance would impoverish the universal Church herself, which would no longer breathe, in the words of John Paul II, "with her two lungs"^[83].

Above all, their presence is a witness in the strongest sense — martyria. To remain Christian at Mosul, Aleppo or in Upper Egypt is to confess Christ at the price of everything. That is why maintaining a living Christian presence in the Middle East, and not its museification, remains the constant objective of the Holy See, faithful to the conviction of Benedict XVI: communion and witness are inseparable, and "the great witness is precisely the life of communion"^[84].

• The Eastern Catholic Churches — the 23 sui iuris (autonomous, of their own law) Churches in communion with Rome.
• The Great Eastern Schism — the 1054 rupture between Rome and Constantinople.
• The Fall of Constantinople (1453) — the end of the Byzantine Empire and its consequences for Eastern Christians.
• The Crusades (1095–1291) and The First Crusade.
• The Council of Ephesus (431) — the definition of Mary as Theotokos.
• Eastern Liturgy — the Byzantine, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian and Chaldean rites.