‘I can feel the tension in a way that I haven’t before,’ says Beirut archbishop

BEIRUT (OSV News) — As Israeli drones could be heard flying overhead, OSV News sat down with Archbishop Georges Bacouni of Beirut and Jbeil at his Beirut residence to discuss faith, war and reconciliation.

Archbishop Bacouni has spent the past six years as archbishop of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in the nation’s capital.

He was 13 years old when the civil war broke out in 1975 and recalled being in his home in the Beirut suburb of Ain El Remmaneh, minutes away from where 27 Palestinians were slaughtered in a revenge killing following the murder of four Phalangists. The events of this day are widely believed to have been the trigger for the civil war that followed.

Archbishop Bacouni’s calling to the church came in his late 20s. “I was a bank manager, a practicing Catholic but I did not have a personal relationship with God. Like everyone I had doubts and questions when it came to my faith. But at that time I chose to love God, to follow him and knowing that he loves me internally is what keeps me going in times of crisis,” he told OSV News Oct. 18.

Having returned the previous day from a religious summit in Bkerke, north of Beirut, Archbishop Bacouni struck a tone of cautious optimism regarding the end of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.

In the first of a set of nine key points, the religious leaders called on the United Nations Security Council to impose an immediate cease-fire and end the “humanitarian massacre against Lebanon.”

Archbishop Bacouni told OSV News that “Israel justifies its incursion by citing the need to return its citizens to northern Israel. Rarely is it mentioned that there are Lebanese families that will be permanently displaced as a result of the activity in the south of the country,” he said.

There are many moral conundrums when it comes to war, one of those being the slaying of civilians to achieve military goals, the archbishop stressed, citing Exodus 23:7 from the Old Testament: “The innocent and the just you shall not put to death, for I will not acquit the guilty.”

The archbishop said this came to his mind after the recent bombing in Aitou, a village in the Zgharta district, a mountainous area mainly populated by Maronite Christians in northern Lebanon — far from the south front.

“You allegedly had Israelis targeting one individual and at the same time they killed 24 civilians. That’s not proportionate. It is not going to gain any sympathy in Lebanon nor lead to a softening in attitude towards Hezbollah. How can you expect to convince people that this is an act of self defense?” he asked.

“It is not for us as human beings to decide what is right and what is wrong for it was laid out clearly to us by God, whom Jesus revealed to us,” he said.

The casual language around the use of the word “God” is evident in Lebanon today, Archbishop Bacouni explained. “Hezbollah proclaims to be ‘the party of God’ and the uncomfortable truth about the current conflict is that it is divided along religious lines. It’s not only about politics and land. The war becomes an even more delicate subject when each side is claiming that they will be the ones going to heaven and they are on the side of righteousness.”

He added: “I can feel the tension in a way that I haven’t before.”

He said that since the start of Israeli airstrikes and rocket attacks inside Lebanon from Israel in September, “overnight the church became a go to point for everyone’s problems.”

Many people come and ask him whether they should stay or leave the country, the archbishop said.

“I don’t dare to tell them what to do. It is a deeply personal and difficult decision to make,” he stressed. “A home is not just where you eat and sleep, it is where memories are made.”

The number of people displaced “has just become a number,” he said. “There is little understanding of the impact on individual lives. We are not robots — it is humiliating for us to accept food and aid. All people want is to return to their homes.”

If and when a cease-fire is ever implemented — an active effort needs to be made toward reconciliation, Archbishop Bacouni stressed.

“When the war ended in 2006, we never came together as a country. One side won and the other side lost. So the end result was not that the conflict was over but that it was put on hold. As a country we need to become better at forgiving each other,” he stressed.

Lebanon is a country already devastated by economic crisis, a political impasse and the largest number of refugees per capita and per square mile in the world.

For now, Lebanon’s Christians battle on. “We have survived the Ottoman Empire and I am quite certain we will be here in 100 years. In what number or capacity I am less certain,” the archbishop lamented.

With regard to today’s conflict “our responsibility as religious leaders, whether Christian or Muslim, is to behave as peacemakers and be able to sacrifice our own opinion for sake of peace,” he said.

Archbishop Bacouni also said that the role of Christians is to maintain peace and fight for peace.

“I don’t understand how you can create a link between being Christian and war. War wasn’t acceptable in 1975, it wasn’t acceptable at the time of the Crusades eight centuries ago, and it isn’t acceptable now. We must try and remember that God was revealed to us through Jesus, the Prince of Peace,” he said.

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