Vatican City, Nov 28, 2007 / 08:32 am
The “most famous poet of the patristic age," St. Ephrem the Syrian, was the topic of the Pope’s general audience held in Paul VI Hall today. Wishing to show that the Christian faith is not European in origin, Benedict XVI pointed to St. Ephrem’s origins in modern day Turkey.
The Pope remarked how "it is widely believed today that Christianity is a European religion which subsequently exported that continent's culture to other countries. But the truth is much more complex."
Picking up on a theme from his audience last week, Pope Benedict reminded people that, "The roots of the Christian religion are in the Old Testament, hence in Jerusalem and the Semitic world. And Christianity constantly draws nourishment from these Old Testament roots.”
During the first centuries of Christianity, it spread both “westwards - to the Greco-Latin world where it later inspired European culture - and eastwards to Persia and India, where it contributed to the formation of a specific culture, in Semitic languages and with its own identity," the pontiff noted.