You wouldn’t know it from the mainstream media which long since stopped reporting truthfully from the Middle East, but Christians there, as elsewhere in the Islamic world, are suffering severe persecution by  ‘the religion of peace’.  Many seek asylum in Israel. 

This month Pope Benedict is to visit what both Christians and Jews call the Holy Land. Denis Maceoin, in an article that first appeared in the Catholic Herald, has some advice for him.

An urgent matter on the pope’s agenda must surely be the plight of Christians in the West Bank and Gaza. Harassed by militant Islamic groups, the Christian population there has been dwindling. In 1990, Christians made up 60% of the population in Bethlehem; today, a mere 19 years later, they number just 20% and that figure is shrinking rapidly. Christians in the Palestinian territories have fallen in numbers from 15% of the population in 1950 to less than 1% today. Calls have been made for their extinction, and attacks are regularly made on institutions and individual Christians. More and more Christians pack their bags and flee. In Israel, their numbers have risen from 34,000 in 1948 to more than 140,000 today. If the pope does not speak out and make this an issue of international concern, the bombings, the beatings and the intimidation will continue, and before very long the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem will be left to the tender mercies of Islamic Jihad.