Printed Materials
Speech at the Inauguration of the Liqaa Meeting Centre
Rabweh, Lebanon - 10 May 2011
In the name of Christ the Savior, raised from the dead, we
are inaugurating the Liqaa Meeting Centre for the dialogue of
civilizations beside the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate in
Rabweh.
We are inaugurating this Liqaa Meeting Centre in your presence and
under your patronage, Your Excellency, General Michel Sleiman,
President of the Lebanese Republic. Your presence is the sign of
your love for the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and of the very
special concern you have for the spiritual and social values of
dialogue in Lebanon, and your appreciation of the goals that the
Liqaa Centre seeks to realize, as a place for the expression and
development of those values.
The Liqaa Centre has taken as its object to be a local and
international centre for dialogue between people in their religion,
faith, civilization, culture, industry, politics, thought, vision,
outlook and perspectives of their whole life.
Though born today, it is in the very old, traditional line of the
Melkite Greek Catholic Church, which has always been considered as a
Church without borders that makes every possible effort to build
bridges in a divided world, through dialogue without frontiers – a
religious, cultural dialogue that embraces the whole of
civilization.
Meeting has always been an object of very special concern to me. We
were one of the first founders of the Al-Liqa Center in Jerusalem in
1983, together with its longstanding current Director, Dr. Geries S.
Khoury, one of our faithful from Upper Galilee. We founded it
together with a select group of Palestinian Christian and Muslim
thinkers, university teachers. I was head of its board of trustees
until my election as Patriarch in 2000. Palestine’s Al-Liqa Center
remains to this day its dialogue centre par excellence.
We chose the term Liqaa, wishing to express through this the
essential goal of this institution: that of meeting, in the absolute
sense. We call men and women to meet, without determining the aim or
objective of the meeting. The meeting takes place within the bounds
of human perspectives, whatever their scope or range.
Liqaa is a centre for meeting between God and man, through faith,
religion and belief. It is a religious meeting, of Christian, Muslim
and Jewish faith, and moreover, of meeting with all sorts of
convictions, even outside those of church, synagogue or mosque. It
is an encounter in the vast sanctuary or temple of the world, a
meeting of people with one another in the world which is both God’s
and man’s; limited by neither time nor place, nor confined to an
East-West theme, nor to the civilization and culture of our Eastern
Arab world, nor to the cultural and intellectual ambiance of the
Mediterranean basin nor even that of Europe and the West. In fact
our Middle East was and still remains the road to the Far East. The
world is the purview for our Liqaa Centre, which will be an open
academic centre and a global platform. It is an intellectual,
academic centre of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Arab
countries, emigration countries and throughout the whole world and
through this Church, a platform for everyone.
Allow me, Your Excellency, President of the Lebanese Republic, to
say with pride that the Liqaa Centre is at the service of your
thought and vision. In fact, it was you who launched the idea that
Lebanon is the centre of meeting and dialogue of civilizations, from
the highest global platform at the United Nations. In fact this
Liqaa Centre is at the service of your congresses for implementation
of your guidelines and for your dialogue programs. Furthermore, we
place the Liqaa Centre at the service of Lebanon’s mission, which is
itself the mission. In fact we can say that Lebanon itself is
essentially and entirely a dialogue centre for the Arab world and
for the whole world.
Your Excellency, President of the Republic, ladies and gentleman, my
brothers and sisters, this great association, this Liqaa Centre,
would not have seen the light of day, without the generosity of a
great person, who has a broad, humane vision, a man of immense
horizons, with an enlightened mind and large heart, engaged in
dialogue and government, a wise leader, open to his people and
citizens and to the Arab world and indeed the whole world: I mean
the great Sultan Qaboos, Sultan of Oman, may God, in his protection
and concern, preserve him.
It is thanks to the generosity of His Majesty and his hand, heart
and mind that this Liqaa Centre was able to be built. Moreover a
unique project has been realized in this way, a joint project
between the Sultanate of Oman and the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.
It is a project of charity, of love, that links the Patriarchate to
the Sultanate of Oman, and the Patriarch and the Sultan. It is a
project built through the stones of that love. The stone building
was completed with God’s blessing and the generosity of the Sultan’s
gift. There still remains the joint project between the Patriarchate
and the Sultanate and its representatives, a continuation through
the Liqaa Center's projects, congresses, perspectives, spirituality
and vision. This link between the Patriarchate and the Sultanate
will be recorded in letters of gold in the registers of the
Patriarchate’s history and the memories of its generations to come.
Here too, prayers and invocations will be continually raised in the
church of Our Lady of the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary whom, as the
Qur’an says 1 , “God chose and purified, chosen above all women of
the nations.” The Virgin Mary, our Lady of the Annunciation, who is
the patron of this new church that overlooks the Liqaa Centre and
that will be inaugurated very soon, will be the protector of His
Majesty, the Sultan, his collaborators and all his people. She will
bless him and all those who have worked and will continue to work in
this centre, and all those who will benefit from the services of
this centre.
The church of Our Lady of the Annunciation that we shall soon be
inaugurating is linked to the mission of this Liqaa Centre. Indeed,
the Feast of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary was declared a
national religious holiday for the whole of Lebanon and for all
Lebanese citizens, both Christian and Muslim. It is a feast of
dialogue, and in its Greek expression evangelismos, an
announcement of beautiful, joyful news.
So from this Church of the Annunciation and this Liqaa Centre will
be continually propagated pleasant news to people, to every person
in the whole world, both in Lebanon and in the Sultanate of Oman.
The venerable Qur’an says, “We created you from a single (pair) of a
male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may
know each other,” 2
and Saint John, the Beloved Disciple and Evangelist says,
“The Word was made flesh and dwelt (set up his tent) among us
3
,” and in these two venerated verses we find a summary of
the Liqaa Centre’s program – a program of politics, culture,
industry and sociology.
God, may his name be praised, founded the first liqaa centre by
creating man in his image and likeness, and by becoming incarnate he
called the world, its people, humanity to meeting with him and his
love. He called them to love and he made this love the condition for
following him and the foundation of his commandments and the holy
teachings of his Gospel. In fact, he said, “By this shall all men
know that ye are my disciples, if ye have loved one to another? 4
”
“For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down
the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his
flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in
ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so
making peace. 5”
I would like to give hearty thanks to the basic team who accompanied
the realization of this unique dream: bringing this dream to the
attention of His Majesty, Sultan Qaboos, preparing the architectural
plans and following all the stages of its realization. This team
comprises: Rev. Dr. Michel Sabee, Head of our Patriarchal College in
Beirut, who was the contact messenger, bringing this dream of the
Patriarch to His Majesty the Sultan; then there is the
Patriarchate’s Economos, Rev. Economos Elie Shatawi, who undertook
the supervision of the project on the spot; the architect, Mr. Elie
Abou Hala and his wife Rosi, who expended all their experience, art,
enthusiasm and faithfulness to make this Centre our Patriarchate’s
finest realization. Our thanks also go to the engineers and workers
who have worked generously, for the excellent quality of their work.
We give our blessing to the center's leadership team who will be
working for the center's aims. We wish them success! May the
bountiful Savior amply reward them!
Your Excellency, President of the Republic, my brothers and sisters,
here is your centre, ready to welcome you and to host your
activities. We hope that you will support this centre by all means,
spiritual and material, at your disposal and through your thoughts
and proposals, and also by finding sponsors for its congresses and
activities. So the Liqaa Centre will be able to realize those
projects through the blessing of the Savior and through your work
and fellowship.
To you all, my friendship and blessing,
Gregorios III
Patriarch of Antioch and All the East,
of Alexandria and of Jerusalem