Vatican City, Apr 30, 2007 / 09:32 am
As an historic Synod of the Syrian Catholic Church concluded Sunday in the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI charged the gathered bishops to be a witness in the Middle East to the rich history and fraternal communion of the Catholic Church and her particular rites, as well as to “announce the Gospel decisively.”
The extraordinary Synod met from April 26th to the 28th and was presided over in the by Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone S.D.B. In attendance were was His Beatitude Ignace Pierre VIII Abdel-Ahad, Patriarch of Antioch of the Syrians in Lebanon, as well as thirteen other bishops.
Pope Benedict told the group that had called for the assembly in order "to revive the secular ties that bind your Church to the Apostolic See and, at the same time, to express the esteem and interest of the Bishop of Rome for each one of you.”
He called the bishops “pastors of a part of the People of God that is not large but ancient and important."