Pope Leo XIV calls for support for Eastern Christians in homelands and diaspora

Less than a week after the beginning of his papal ministry, Pope Leo XIV met with representatives of Eastern Catholic Churches and expressed gratitude for Christians who, in the face of war and disastrous conditions, persevere in the lands of their birth.

“I thank God for those Christians – Eastern and Latin alike – who, above all in the Middle East, persevere and remain in their homelands, resisting the temptation to abandon them,” Pope Leo said during the papal audience for the Jubilee of the Eastern Churches. “Christians must be given the opportunity, and not just in words, to remain in their native lands with all the rights needed for a secure existence. Please, let us strive for this!”

The pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has long supported projects in the lands where Eastern Christianity is predominant, beginning in Eastern Europe in the 1950s. Soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, ACN reached out to Orthodox Christians in Russia and supported the Church emerging from the underground in Ukraine. The charity was a major player in rebuilding homes for Iraqi Christians who had been displaced by war and invasion by the Islamic State group a decade ago.

Reacting to the pope’s comments March 14, Edward F. Clancy, director of outreach for Aid to the Church in Need USA, said the foundation “received Pope Leo XIV’s address to Participants in the Jubilee of Oriental Churches with great joy.”

“His message calls us to continue our mission of supporting Eastern Catholic communities, which demonstrate incredible strength and faith despite facing difficult times,” Clancy said. “ACN will happily continue our commitment to providing essential material and pastoral aid to Eastern Churches in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. These ‘Martyr Churches’ deserve our ongoing prayer and support. Christians must be allowed to remain in their native lands, and they need our assistance to do so. ACN will do our part to ensure they can stay.”

As part of celebrations of the Jubilee Year of Hope, many Eastern Catholics were in Rome this past week for a special focus on Oriental Christianity. The Jubilee of the Eastern Churches included liturgies in various Eastern rites in St. Peter’s Basilica and the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

Pope Leo’s May 14 address, in Pope Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, came near the end of the three-day pilgrimage. Sitting near the pope were the heads of several Eastern Churches, including those who have, in recent years, led their flocks through times of turmoil. They included His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head and father of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; Iraq-based Cardinal Louis Raphaël I Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Church; and His Beatitude Patriarch Joseph Absi, head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, which is present especially in Syria and Lebanon.

Risk losing religious identity

Pope Leo quoted from significant documents of two of his predecessors, including Pope Leo XIII, who said in the 1894 apostolic letter Orientalium Dignitas, “The work of human redemption began in the East,” and Pope St. John Paul II’s 1995 apostolic letter Orientale Lumen, which said Eastern Christians have “a unique and privileged role as the original setting where the Church was born.”

Unfortunately, Leo XIV said, many Eastern Christians have been forced to flee their homelands because of war and persecution, instability and poverty. He said they “risk losing not only their native lands, but also, when they reach the West, their religious identity. As a result, with the passing of generations, the priceless heritage of the Eastern Churches is being lost.”

He is calling on Vatican officials who deal specifically with Eastern Catholic Churches to develop guidelines to help Western Catholic leaders to “concretely support Eastern Catholics in the diaspora in their efforts to preserve their living traditions.”

That’s important, the pope said, because Eastern Christian traditions have great gifts that can benefit the universal Church. Among those gifts, he said, are a sense of mystery in the Liturgy, which evokes a “sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty.”

“It is vital,” he said, “that you preserve your traditions.”

“Who better than you can sing a song of hope even amid the abyss of violence?” Leo XIV asked. “Who better than you, who have experienced the horrors of war so closely that Pope Francis referred to you as ‘martyr Churches’ (Address to ROACO)? From the Holy Land to Ukraine, from Lebanon to Syria, from the Middle East to Tigray and the Caucasus, how much violence do we see! Rising up from this horror, from the slaughter of so many young people, which ought to provoke outrage because lives are being sacrificed in the name of military conquest, there resounds an appeal: the appeal not so much of the Pope, but of Christ himself, who repeats: ‘Peace be with you!'”