Eastern voices raised in defence of Christians

In Vienna for the fiftieth anniversary of the Pro Oriente Foundation, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I; the Coptic Pope-Patriarch, Tawadros II; and Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, chairman of the Pro-Oriente curatorium, called on all Christian Churches to raise their voices for the persecuted Christians in the Middle East, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

Not violence, but only dialogue and a wish for reconciliation could lead to peace in the Holy Land and in the entire Middle Eastern region, Patriarch Bartholomew said. Joint witness of Christians who spoke as one Church was imperative in countries where Christians were in the minority, Pope Tawadros II underlined.

Christians were being oppressed to such an extent that they could not raise their own voices, Schönborn emphasised. Pro Oriente had paved a “royal road” for ecumenical encounters between the Catholic Church and the Old Oriental Churches for which it deserved special praise, Cardinal Kurt Koch, responsible for Christian unity, stressed.

Pro-Oriente was founded on 4 November 1964 by the then Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Franz König. One of its “milestones” was the 1971 “Vienna Christological Formula”, which reconciled the Catholic Church with the Syrian-Orthodox Church after 1,500 years.