Flaptekst

This book presents the various Churches and ecclesial communities in the Middle East, focusing on the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox and the Oriental Catholic Churches, the spiritual heritage of the Coptic, Syriac and Armenian traditions. The Christians in the Middle East can be called a Church of martyrs.

Listening to witnesses of faith in the first centuries, as well as to the martyrs of our time, this book reveals the cruel reality of the ‘forgotten genocides’ at the beginning of the twentieth century. The author discusses the role of Christians in the Middle East as bridge builders, and emphasizes the importance of a historical perspective in order to understand better the crisis in the Middle East, the search for the underlying cause of terrorist attacks, a plea for a spirituality of encounter: a growth in openness and a deepening of Christian identity. Finally, he reflects on the responsibility of the West and expresses the firm hope and expectation that there is still a future for the Christians in the Middle East, a new dawn.

Gabriel Quicke, priest of the diocese Bruges (Belgium), lived as Fidei Donum priest in Lebanon, where he worked as professor at the Major Seminary of the Fathers of Saint Paul in Harissa (the Greek Melkite Church). He was also assistant in a refugee camp for Palestinian Christians in Dbayeh and chaplain at the Saint Joseph University in Beirut. From 2009 to 2018 he was official at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and was responsible for the dialogue with the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Assyrian Church of the East. Currently, he is president of the Holy Spirit College and the Leo XIII Seminary, and professor ‘Eastern and Oriental Christianity’ at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies – KU Leuven.