“We Westerners bear a heavy responsibility for destabilizing the Middle East, with our tendency to export our culture and ask its peoples to conform their lives to it,” the prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Eastern Churches told a gathering of Catholic leaders from the Middle East.
Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti said that the Church in the West has failed to support Christians in the Middle East, and too often sought to impose European standards on the region. He promised that the Vatican would now seek to support Christians in the Eastern churches.
The archbishop said that the flight of many Christians from the Middle East causes difficulties—not only for those who remain in the region, but also for the Christian migrants who find themselves in nations where there is no Eastern Catholic tradition. Archbishop Gugerotti suggested that “specific instructions are given to the bishops of the Latin Church throughout the world, so as to avoid any assimilation, even unintentional, and to help you preserve your witness of faith in its specificity.”