If is a very heartfelt statement on the tragedy in the Mid-East that are uprooting and killing so many Christians, and the need to unite.
From: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Ecclesia In Medio Oriente
Of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
To The Patriarchs, Bishops, Clergy Consecrated Persons And The Lay Faithful
On The Church In The Middle East:
Communion And Witness
32. The Pastors of the Eastern Catholic Churches sui iuris realize with regret and concern that the numbers of their faithful are dwindling in the traditional Patriarchal territories, and for some time now they have had to develop a plan of pastoral care for emigrants.25 I am certain that they are doing all in their power to exhort the faithful to continue to hope, not to leave their homelands and not to sell their possessions.26 I ask them to continue to show affection for their priests and faithful in the diaspora, and I encourage them to stay in close contact with their families and Churches and above all to remain steadfast in their faith in God through their religious identity, built as it is upon venerable spiritual traditions.27 By preserving this closeness to God and to their respective Churches, and by cultivating a deep love of their Latin brothers and sisters, they will greatly benefit the entire Catholic Church. I also exhort the Church’s Pastors in those places where Eastern Catholics have settled to welcome them with charity and fraternal esteem, to facilitate the bonds of communion between emigrants and their Churches of origin, and to enable them to celebrate in accordance with their own traditions and, wherever possible, to develop pastoral and parish activities.28
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The demands of the apostolic mission and the complexity of the moment call for prayer and for renewed pastoral enthusiasm. The urgency of the present hour and the injustice of so many tragic situations invite us to reread the First Letter of Peter and to join in bearing witness to Christ who died and rose again. This “togetherness”, this communion willed by our Lord and God, is needed now more than ever. Let us put aside all that could be cause for discontent, however justifiable, in order to concentrate unanimously on the one thing necessary: the goal of uniting the whole of humanity and the entire universe in God’s only Son (cf. Rom 8:29; Eph 1:5, 10).
