Gallagher refuses to single out Christians for special protection

Christians persecuted in the Middle East should not be singled out for special protection, according to Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States, writes James Roberts.

The archbishop was speaking last week at the Royal United Services Institute in London’s Whitehall about the “foreign policy” of the Holy See under Pope Francis. Archbishop Gallagher was asked whether the recent joint statement of Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, which emphasised a joint Orthodox-Catholic commitment specifically to defend persecuted Christians, meant special attention should be paid to their plight.

The Christian population in the Middle East has decreased dramatically in recent years. According to figures published by The New York Times, a third of Syria’s 600,000 Christians had fled by July last year; Lebanon’s Christian population has shrunk from 78 per cent to 34 per cent over the past century; and only a third of the 1.5 million Christians who lived in Iraq in 2003 remain today. The primary cause of the exodus has been persecution.

The archbishop would only say that “all minorities”, including Christians, needed protection.

The joint statement made in Havana on 12 February said: “Our gaze must firstly turn to those regions of the world where Christians are victims of persecution. In many countries of the Middle East and North Africa whole families, villages and cities of our brothers and sisters in Christ are being completely exterminated. Their churches are being barbarously ravaged and looted, their sacred objects profaned, their monuments destroyed. It is with pain that we call to mind the situation in Syria, Iraq and other countries of the Middle East, and the massive exodus of Christians from the land in which our faith was first disseminated and in which they have lived since the time of the Apostles.”