| Two thousand years deep, despite Muslim attemps over the centuries to cut them off, grub them out, and burn what remains.. |
Christians have been rooted in the Middle East as minority communities since the birth of the religion, but their numbers are dwindling amid conflict and jihadist attacks.
Today they make up only four percent of the region’s population, down from 20% before the First World War, Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said this month.
Pope Francis on Saturday voiced concern that Christians will eventually disappear from the region amid "murderous indifference" to their plight.
Here is a breakdown of the main Christian presence in the Middle East.
Egypt
Coptic Orthodox is the largest Christian denomination both in the region and in Egypt, where its members make up some 10 percent of the population.
They have little representation in government though, and have been targeted in anti-Christian attacks that have multiplied since the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group appeared.
Since December 2016 more than 100 people have been killed in anti-Christian attacks in Egypt claimed by IS.
In April 2017 Copts were targeted in bombing attacks on two churches on Palm Sunday, killing 45 people.
The following month, button men rubbed out about 30 Christians who refused to renounce their faith.
Iraq
Chaldean Christians numbered 1.5 million in Iraq before the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein but their numbers have since plummeted to less than 500,000, according to Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, appointed cardinal by the pope in June.
Many fled from the sectarian violence that followed Saddam’s ouster.
They were also pushed out of parts of northern Iraq in 2014 as IS jihadists seized control of vast swathes of territory.
Qaraqosh, once home to the country’s greatest concentration of Christians, was recaptured by Iraqi forces in October 2016.
Syria
Catholic and Orthodox sects comprise the majority of Christians in Syria, where they represented between five and nine percent of the population before civil unrest erupted in 2011.
According to the Chaldean bishop of Aleppo, Antoine Audo, half of Syria’s 1.5 million Christians have fled the country to escape the war.
Syria’s Christians have mostly sought neutrality throughout the conflict, while fearing the rise of jihadist groups. Many backed
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators...
for that reason.
Churches have been damaged or destroyed since 2011 and large numbers of Christians have been murdered or kidnapped.
Leb
Lebanese Christians, most of them Maronite Catholics, are the second largest group of Christians in the Middle East after the Egyptian Copts.
Today they represent less than 35 percent of Leb’s population, although there are no official statistics.
Leb has a Christian president ‐ the only one in the region ‐ under a power-sharing and parity arrangement that means there is a Sunni Moslem premier and a Shiite parliamentary speaker.
Israel, Paleostinian Territories
There are around 160,000 Israeli Christians, the vast majority of them Arabs in the north, representing about two percent of the population.
In the West Bank ‐ mainly in Bethlehem and Ramallah ‐ and East Jerusalem, there are nearly 50,000 Christians of various denominations.
Although now a minority in Bethlehem, where the Bible says Jesus was born, Christians play a central economic role.
In the Gazoo Strip the number of Christians, mostly Greek Orthodox, is in steady decline since the Islamist Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth", movement took power in 2007.
Jordan
Greek Orthodoxy and Catholicism are the largest Christian denominations in Jordan, where they make up about six percent of the population.
There are Christian members of parliament and members of the community play prominent rolls in society.
Pope denounces ‘complicit silence’ on Mideast attacks against Christians[IsraelTimes] Pope Francis denounced the "complicit silence" that has allowed violence to consume the Middle East and drive tens of thousands of Christians from their homes, during a remarkable gathering Saturday of Orthodox patriarchs and Catholic leaders united in praying for peace in the region.
Francis hosted the daylong ecumenical service in the symbolically rich Adriatic port city of Bari, considered a bridge between East and West and home to the relics of St. Nicholas, an important saint in the Orthodox world.
Francis greeted the patriarchs outside the Basilica of St. Nicholas and together they descended to the crypt to pray before the relics and light a flame for peace symbolizing the unity of Christians.
For years, the Vatican has voiced concern about the plight of Christians driven from Mideast communities that date to the time of Christ. Just last week, Francis decried intensified attacks in southern Syria that killed scores of people and forced tens of thousands to flee.
Among the patriarchs on hand was the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, as well as patriarchs from ancient churches of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Notably absent from the gathering was Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has been a strong supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin
...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances...
’s military intervention in Syria. Kirill sent his deputy, Metropolitan Hilarion.