Pope Francis travels to Bari on Saturday 7 July to pray for peace in the Middle East alongside Christian leaders from the region.
Francis announced he would travel to the eastern city in Italy which overlooks the Adriatic Sea for a day of prayer and reflection on “the dramatic situation of the Middle East which afflicts so many brothers and sisters in the faith”.
The Pope will be joined by Cardinal Louis Sako, the Patriarch of Chaldean Christians in Iraq, whom Francis recently named a cardinal, along with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church.
Leaders of the Oriental Orthodox churches, the Assyrian church and other Catholic oriental church bishops will also be present. Many of them are on the front line ministering to the persecuted Christian communities in the region.
The Pope has repeatedly talked about an “ecumenism of blood” which is uniting Christians, regardless of their denomination. Speaking at the Vatican in advance of the visit, Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, pointed out that while Christians represented 20 per cent of the population in the Middle East before the First World War, today that figure stood at just four per cent.
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