Beirut (AsiaNews) The Maronite Church needs to renews itself at all levels: spiritual, liturgical, disciplinal and religious. For the Maronite Patriarch, Card Nassrallah Sfeir, the Church's renewal is an urgent matter. He spoke about it at the last session of the Patriarchal Synod which, after two weeks of activities, ends today.
This morning he presided over a mass celebrated in Our Lady of the Mountain Monastery (north of Beirut). The service opened the third and last phase of the Synod. Some 40 Maronite bishops from Lebanon and the Diaspora were present as were four General Superiors representing Maronite religious orders and eight representing women's congregations.
In his homily, the Patriarch stressed the importance of this phase in the synod, indicating that it was urgent to take "prophetic" decisions in a troubled world.
In the two preceding sessions, it had become clear that, after centuries, a deeper study of the state of the Maronite Church was necessary and that all the participants had to look inside themselves.
This Synod comes in fact almost 190 years after the last one, which was held in Louaizé in 1818.
Cardinal Sfeir urged the synodal fathers to take the necessary steps to renew the Maronite Church in light of recent developments in Lebanese and international politics.
The Patriarch spoke about young people, urging them not to leave their native land, asking the authorities to improve living conditions so that fewer join the diaspora.
The proceedings from the Synod will be published once it is over and its decisions go to the Apostolic See for approval.
The Maronite Church has more than 10 million followers in 30 dioceses around the world. It has more than 2,000 priests, 1,500 men religious and 3,000 women religious.