Originally posted on Pravoslavie.ru, here.
You have brothers who love you. Don’t forget us!
A talk with Bishop Qais (Sadiq) of Erzurum by Fares Nofal
On this day, when the Church commemorates the great
saint of Damascus, John, we would like to acquaint our
readers with a remarkable hierarch of the Antiochian
Church, the Syrian bishop Qais (Sadiq) of Erzurum. Bishop
Qais talks with Pravoslavie.ru correspondent Fares Nofal,
an Orthodox Syrian living in Ukraine.
* * *
From November 28-30, vicar of the Patriarch of Antioch
Bishop Qais (Sadiq) visited the city of Odessa. On His
Eminence’s last day in the city, I had an
opportunity to talk with this outstanding hierarch of
Antioch about earthly war, higher peace, and the fate of
Arab Christianity.
—Your Eminence, you are an
eye-witness observer of what is happening today in the
holy lands in the Near East—the cradle of Christ and
Christianity. But before we begin, could you tell our
readers a little about yourself?
—First I would like to give thanks to God that He
has allowed me to be with you in these holy, blessed
lands—lands that have given us so many teachers and
instructors. The very people and the Russian Orthodox
Church have always supported us both prayerfully and
materially—and Christian Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and
Jordan remember the Russian help given them in the days of
the Ottoman occupation. But today also,
Christians—Russians and Ukrainians—do not
forget to pray for us, giving us their fraternal love,
fighting for our Christian presence in the Arab countries.
I became bishop about a year ago with the title,
“Bishop of Erzurum”. Erzurum is a toponym that
can today be found on the political map of Turkey. Like
many other historical dioceses of Antioch, this
metropolitinate witnessed the mass extermination of
faithful Arab Christians and Armenians. Judge for
yourself: according to various accounts, in 1917 in the
city of Erzurum there lived about 25-30 thousand Orthodox
Christians, while by 1925 the number of local Christians
was reduced to zero. They were all the victims of a cruel
Turkish massacre; and, unfortunately, both Ottoman
ambitions and Ottoman political methods are still just as
brutally cruel today.
Besides my obedience as vicar—assistant to His
Beatitude
Patriarch John
X—I by God’s mercy fulfill the duty of
director of the Orthodox Center for ecumenical research,
which we founded in Oman twenty years ago. The
Center’s slogan—“Service and
witness”—reflects its essentially missionary
aims: we strive to raise the level of religious education
of our Arabic parishioners, living under the oppression of
circumstances in the Jerusalem Church. Alas, many of the
faithful justly complain that Jerusalem is completely in
the hands of Greeks, who themselves prefer the pursuit of
their own aims, which we don’t understand, over
mission and service to the Arab people. I also serve our
Romanian flock, which has grown quite significantly over
recent years. Today in Bucharest alone there are around
150 Orthodox Arab families, with over fifty families
scattered around the country.
Earlier, under the reposed
Patriarch
Ignatius IV, as a teacher of canon law and Liturgical
theology in Balamand University, I fulfilled the
responsibility of advisor to the supreme ecclesiastical
court of the Antiochian Church and head of the Antiochian
department of external Church affairs. This experience
turned out to be quite useful later, when I represented
Jordan in the UNESCO and UNICEF ethics committees, and the
Antiochian Church in over ninety-two countries of the
world where the sons and daughters of the Arab East live
as permanent residents.
—
Yesterday, Sunday, was a day filled with
events for you—you met with the bishop of Odessa,
Metropolitan
Agathangel, and prayed for the first time with the
local Orthodox Arab community. What were your first
impressions? How do you see the future for the Orthodox
Arabs of this city?
—His Eminence Agathangel received us very warmly. We
talked for a long time on themes that concern us—in
part, we touched upon the question of the past and future
relationships of our sister Churches; and his words simply
attached me to this blessed land! In the morning, when we
were at the Liturgy in the Holy Trinity Cathedral, I
couldn’t help but notice the endless amount of
children and teenagers approaching the Chalice; after all,
you’ll hardly find this in the European
churches… In this I see the main proof that fervent
faith is still alive in these good-hearted, pious people,
the hope of which, after years of oppression and
persecution, is preserved in its children—the future
members of the living Church.
As for our flocks, I came here only in order to hear their
wishes, their voices (and thanks are due separately to
Metropolitan Niphon [Saykali], the representative of the
Antiochian Patriarch to the Moscow Patriarch, who
supported and strengthened me in my desire to come here).
Alas, many of them do not understand the liturgical Church
Slavonic language of the Russian Church, and I am glad
that they have the opportunity to pray here in their
native language; this keeps them together, gives them the
needed comfort that comes from a trusting communication
with their Creator. Unfortunately I had very little time
to really talk with them; but tomorrow or the day after
tomorrow I will make a report to His Beatitude Onuphry
about their needs and cares, which I hope will be the
first step towards the ordering of their Church life here,
in Kiev and Odessa.
—As we know, the whole of the Orthodox
Church has decisively judged the first fruits of
“Arab Spring”; and now five years have passed
since the beginning of the so-called “Syrian
revolution”. How do Antiochian Christians view the
results of this “revolution”? What is the
general essence of their daily struggle?
—"Arab spring” is, in my view, not a
revolution but more of an “Arab autumn”, which
destroyed our civilization. And it is obvious that running
things behind the scenes of the “autumn” are
entirely non-Arab hands. I hoped that the
micro-revolutions would happen in the Arab countries and
direct them to specific, positive changes. But what we see
in, for example, Syria, is not a micro-revolution, but a
genuine game of blood, controlled from a distance.
President Bashar al-Assad is a very educated man, who well
understands the problems of his country. From the very
onset of his presidency he strove to open Syria to the
world; under his leadership a cultural and economic
renaissance began in the country, and he was trying, as
they say, to “change the system”. And it is
perfectly natural that the process of a “change of
system” takes more than twenty-four hours and even
more than two or three years. But his labors where buried
by the fruits of the London Colonial Conference of 1907,
which had dismembered and weakened the Arab world already
many years ago. Everything that is happening in the Near
East today is the belated gift of the West to its
satellites in the region.
And this “gift” destroyed our Christian
heritage—our museums have been plundered, and our
holy sites have been demolished. The Mongols, who seized
the lands of the Caliphate, did whatever they
wanted—but they did not touch its stones or spirit;
but now the ISIS fighters, supported by the Wahabites of
Saudi Arabia and Qatar, radicals in Turkey and American
geopolitics, are putting great effort into wiping Eastern
Christian culture from the face of the earth—of
course, together with both its living and inanimate
bearers. It is no surprise that the next target of these
powers is Russia. The hirers of terror do not hide this
fact: even Kissinger announced the “fall of European
walls of peace” as an effective means of opposing
the Russian presence… Migrants are coming to Europe
from Turkey, and true Christian Syrians comprise only ten
percent of the total number of refugees. The result is
that everyone is making a living off of our blood, the
blood of the true victims, and we are suffering more than
everyone!
—You spoke of forced migration—the
real tragedy of Arab culture. But Orthodox Russia went
through something similar at the beginning of the
twentieth century. The “philosophical
steamships” again acquainted the West with
Orthodoxy. What do you think—does today’s
tragedy of Arab Orthodoxy have some chance of becoming the
beginning of a new stage in its existence? Perhaps we
should be prepared to see an Arabic
Saint Serge in
Europe?
—Of course, our history also reminds one of a sort
of “philosophical steamship”. The second half
of the nineteenth century, as we know, marked by a series
of genocides in Lebanon and Damascus, motivated many Arab
thinkers and artists to migrate to Egypt, and then to
North and South America. This is how a whole trend in Arab
literature arose—the so-called “literature of
the diaspora”, created, in part, in Arabic
publications in America, and in te “Arabic
clubs” of Brazil and Argentina. And this literature
is mostly Christian.
The twentieth century brought the East new wars,
distancing ever further new philosophers and poets,
theologians and musicians from their historical
motherland. Many outstanding doctors, teachers, and
professors in the West today are Arab Christian
intelligentsia, forced to flee their own homes. We hope
that these brothers of ours who have fallen victim to the
Islamist’s blind force will not cast Christ out of
the soil of their hearts and remain His faithful
witnesses. Of course, this is our task: Who if not the
Mother Church will gather her children in the countries of
diaspora? We must remain apostles of love and truth and
confess our Christianity, our Orthodoxy, without being
shy. We cannot be a “minority”—we are
all in ourselves the very pinch of salt that makes a large
amount of food fit for the table.
—Several days ago, ISIS called Ukraine,
right after Russia, it’s enemy. As we know, Russia
has intervened in the political situation in the region,
and some political critics, polemicists, and even clergy
of the Russian Orthodox Church have opined that this was a
serious mistake. On the other hand, Metropolitan Louka (al
Khoury) after his recent prayer in the Mariamite Cathedral
in Damascus supported Russian military aid in the struggle
against Islamism. How might you evaluate the given
situation? What is the role of Russian aide in the
struggle of Syrian Christians?
—Of course, we must discern the difference between
political and ecclesiastical relationships. As for the
latter, the Russian Orthodox Church has never abandoned
us: the abundant prayers of the Russian and Ukrainian
peoples and their generous gifts have equally reached
their mark. Thanks to this support we feel that we are not
alone. And just last year the Romanian Orthodox Church
also decided to help us, bringing a gift to Antioch of
500,000 euros for the needy. Nevertheless, there is no
greater gift than the holy prayers for peace in the East
raised in your homes and churches.
From the political point of view, everything is much
simpler: every government has its own interests. The
Church cannot support wars or lead them, but it is
obligated to bless the defenders of its homeland. For us,
as Christians, the homeland is the expanse of our witness
of Christ. We know that Blessed Augustine blessed the
soldiers who defended their city, saying, “Just as
each of us has a mother whom we are called to protect, we
must defend our common mother—the motherland.”
It is our blessed obligation to stand up for our country.
Syria has interests connected with Russia, and Russia has
interests connected with Syria; but in the final analysis,
the Syrian army is receiving help, and this is the army of
truth, fighting against the murderers of our history, our
thoughts. And this army will hold out.
—For several years now the world’s
mass media has been painting a picture of the sufferings
of the Christian East—and this of course corresponds
to reality, for the Antiochian Church is beyond all doubt
a suffering Church. But someone might unjustifiably
consider it a dead, powerless Church. So that no one would
doubt the authenticity of life in Orthodox Christianity of
Syria and Iraq, could you tell us about the main events in
the chronicles of the Antiochian Church that have happened
over the past two or three years?
—It goes without saying that our Church is not
dead—it is a Church of witness, a Church of
martyrdom. Confessing the Crucified and Risen Christ,
today it is walking His way of the Cross from Golgotha to
His rising from the dead. We are proud that Antioch is
still giving birth to martyrs, living eternally before the
Throne of the Most High. They are the ones who manifest
the genuine life of the Church. And who if not the
faithful children of the Russian Church, piously
preserving the holy relics of hundreds upon hundreds of
its own martyrs, can understand and perceive this?
Nevertheless, as the Savior said, let the unbelieving
“come and see”. Despite everything, regardless
of the lack of elementary financing, the Antiochian Church
continues to serve both Christians and Muslims of Syria,
Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq with its schools, hospitals, and
charitable organizations. Many of these projects were
given a second life personally by His Beatitude John X,
who although in an extremely unenviable position (one need
only remember the afflictions of the flock entrusted to
him and his kidnapped younger brother
Paul,
the metropolitan of Aleppo), continues his service in
hope, faith, and prayer. Thanks to him, a new Orthodox
university will soon open its doors to the Arab world in
Al-Khumaira—the second after Balamand University,
which is educating today more than seventy students who
have now received their first university degree. Through
the efforts of many of the faithful, construction is being
completed on the Patriarchal hospital of the Virgin Mary
in Balamand. It is no less important for us to give
Orthodox youths of Antioch another chance to establish
themselves on their land, and therefore we are granting
parcels of land near Beirut to families from Lebanon, with
deferred pay and ready houses at cost. I hope that our
Church will continue to serve its flock by strengthening
its last ties with its Holy Motherland.
—
News about the suspension
of Eucharistic communion between Damascus and Jerusalem
has shocked many Orthodox faithful around the world. What
are the real roots of this conflict? What steps can each
side take to resolve it?
—This is a very painful subject. In fact, the steps
taken by the Jerusalem Church, which have trampled upon
the very foundations of canon law, were absolutely
unexpected for us. Firstly, this is a sign of deep
rejection of the rights of a sister Church in its presence
in the Persian Gulf countries; and secondly, it is a sign
of the waning of love in the hearts of our brother
hierarchs.
It all began, as usual, with politics. Wishing to
“pay off its debt” before the world, the
leaders of Qatar decided to demonstrate their openness to
dialogue in general and religious dialogue in particular.
Having given different confessions land to build churches,
the Qatar authorities nevertheless did not forget their
aversion to Arab clergy, who were forbidden to be present
on the country’s territory on a permanent basis (I
know this from my own as well as others’
experience). So, in the 1990s the question of an Orthodox
presence in Qatar was decided by the director of the
regional office of American intelligence
services—earlier the U.S. ambassador to Oman, based
upon his personal family history: his mother’s Greek
identity was the reason he directed the authorities to the
Jerusalem Patriarchate. It was the present Patriarch of
the Holy City, then an archimandrite, who was sent to the
American embassy, and it was under his direction that that
very Orthodox church was built, and the cornerstone of
which was placed by then Patriarch Theodore in
circumvention of all existing norms of ecclesiastical law.
Unlike the Jerusalem Church, absolutely all the other
Churches—including the Russian Church—asked
according to the prescribed order for permission from
Patriarch Ignatius to build churches in for example the
UAE. “Your presence on these lands is precious to
our own presence on them.” That is how His Beatitude
approved the Russian Church representatives’ request
to build a
church in
Sharjah.
But the hierarchs of Jerusalem did not make any request.
In 1999, in my presence, in Oman His Beatitude Ignatius
asked Patriarch Theodore: “Your Holiness, when you
go to visit your brother, you certainly knock at his door
and ask his invitation. Why then did you not knock at our
door?” No intelligible answer of course ever came.
Nevertheless, we humbled ourselves before the completed
fact—although the Orthodox Arabs of Qatar were, to
put it mildly, not elated over the Greek-speaking priest
sent to pastor them. But apparently this was not enough
for Jerusalem. The death of Ignatius IV and the
catastrophic condition in Syria and Iraq motivated the
Jerusalem Church leaders (of course, with the
encouragement of Qatar, which is interested in the
politics of the region) to choose a bishop for this
territory; and despite our plea not to allow such
barbarianism, Jerusalem nevertheless consecrated a bishop
with a corresponding title.
Here the following question can be justifiably asked: how
can we talk about unity when our brothers are doing
everything to trample upon this unity? The Russian and
Antiochian Churches, alas, have had the same bitter
experience: we have not forgotten about the Ecumenical
Patriarch’s meddling in the business of the
Ukrainian schism. In such cases we must remember if not
our love, then at least canon law, which precisely
regulates all similar procedures. I hope that on the
threshold of the Pan-Orthodox Council, Jerusalem will
forget about its Greek politics, that the Ecumenical
Throne would fulfill its duty to put a stop to the current
conflict, and the Russian and Romanian Orthodox Churches
would say their own word—the word of
truth—about the current situation.
—What would you like to say to our Russian
and Ukrainian readers as a good pastor, faithful brother,
and son of the Holy East?
—Your land is a holy land, which you yourselves have
sanctified. You have won it yourselves. Your numberless
martyrs are your great treasure. Your Church was
crucified, and now you are witnessing its resurrection.
Preserve your people, not the stones; it is the people who
are the “temples of the Holy Spirit”,
breathing life by their prostrations into the stone
churches. You, the living members of the Church, can
preserve your faith and pass it on to future, yet unborn
posterity. And of course, do not forget that far away from
these lands you have brothers who love you, who have never
stopped loving you even when the communists were
persecuting your saints. Today, with the help of your
prayers and your love, we must overcome the same trials.
Do not forget us.
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