‘Multi-faith Lebanon should be model for Middle East’

DHAKA: Pope Benedict urged multi-faith Lebanon on Saturday to be a model of peace and religious coexistence for the Middle East, which he called a turbulent region that ‘seems to endure interminable birth pangs’.

The pope, on the second day of a visit clouded by war in neighbouring Syria and protests across the Muslim world, told a gathering of Lebanese political, religious and cultural leaders that religious freedom was a basic right for all people.

Christianity and Islam have lived together in Lebanon for centuries, he said, sometimes within one family.

‘If this is possible within the same family, why should it not be possible at the level of the whole of society?’ he asked, reports The Jerusalem Post.

‘Lebanon is called, now more than ever, to be an example,’ he said, inviting his audience ‘to testify with courage, in season and out of season, wherever you find yourselves, that God wants peace, that God entrusts peace to us.’

BDST: 1808 HRS, SEP 15, 2012

Edited by Robab Rosan, Cultural Affairs Editor