NNA - Maronite Patriarch, Cardinal Beshara Boutros Al-Rahi, strongly criticized the nature of the presidential election sessions, describing the scene in Parliament as a "continuing farce." "The farce of the election sessions continues, officials must take a stand of conscience before the oppressed people and the condition of the state that is disintegrating," Patriarch Al-Rahi said. During his homily on Sunday, the Patriarch held ministers and MPs responsible for the stigma attached to Lebanon by making it lose its right to vote in the United Nations. "The dollar has exceeded fifty thousand, and the gasoline is hitting one million soon, so how will the people live?" he questioned.

By Simon Caldwell -- catholicherald.co.uk -- -- The leader of the Maronite Church has appealed to the international community to begin the repatriation of 1.5 million Syrian refugees from Lebanon because they threaten to destabilise the country. Cardinal Bechara Boutros al-Raï, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, said the refugees, who are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, represented a “real demographic, political and security threat”. “The presence of more than a million and a half Syrian refugees who emigrated and were displaced since 2011 have multiplied and turned into a heavy burden economically and financially on a country already in deep crisis,” he said. “We ask that they be repatriated to their country Syria to protect and rebuild it,” he said during a visit to London. “We demand also that the international donor agencies offer them assistance inside their own country, not in Lebanon.”

The patriarch said the delicate pluralist balance between the historic Christian and Muslim communities of Lebanon was being upset by the vast numbers of refugees, who have added to 500,000 displaced Palestinians given refuge there. The demographic imbalance was being compounded by Christian migration out of the country, he said at a press conference at Westminster Cathedral. Patriarch al-Raï, who is based in Lebanon, has formally submitted a request to Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary, for a summit to be urgently convened to address the mounting crisis in his country. He said he hoped it would also result in solutions to the problem of Palestinian refugees and would confirm the neutrality of Lebanon through a UN Security Council declaration.

The Patriarch is alarmed because the changing religious profile of people living in Lebanon could have implications politically because of the confessionalist system that shares parliamentary seats between representatives of Christian and Muslim communities, including the Druze. Lebanon is particularly prone to instability at the present time because the country has no president. The refugees are among 7.6 million people who have fled the 12-year civil war waged between the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, supported by Russia and Iran, and jihadi groups backed by the United States and other western powers. The ongoing fighting has meant that the refugees wish to remain in the Lebanon for the foreseeable future, supported by Lebanese taxes and expecting free access to education, hospitals and water. “This is the explosive reality,” said the patriarch. “We are not against these people. They are living in misery. They need to go back to their own countries but the international community is not helping.”

During the visit, his first to the UK, the patriarch met Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster and president of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, and Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham. He also met Lord Tariq Ahmad, Minister of State for the Middle East and Dame Sarah MacIntosh, the deputy National Security Adviser with responsibility for the Middle East.