AL-MASRY AL-YOUM: Tripoli -- With most of his flock having fled Libya's violence, Tripoli's Roman Catholic bishop now focuses on keeping the power struggle between Muammar Qadhafi and anti-government rebels out of his church.
But it's getting harder.
After a recent Mass, several Muslim women, all Qadhafi supporters, followed Bishop Giovanni Martinelli into the vestry, tearfully demanding that he call the Vatican to get the pope to halt NATO airstrikes.
Some of his parishioners, especially African migrant workers, have been using his St. Francis Church as a sanctuary, saying they dread going into the streets because they are frequently stopped and harassed by Qadhafi's security forces.
The war has hit hard Christian communities in Tripoli, which include African migrant laborers, Filipino health care workers and European expatriates, among them foreign women married to Libyan men. Libya is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, and missionary activity is not allowed, though clergy say the regime has respected Christians' freedom of worship.
Martinelli and the head of the five other churches in Tripoli — all led by foreign clergy with congregations made up almost entirely of foreigners -- have staked out a cautious middle ground in the conflict that has split Libya into a Qadhafi-controlled west and a rebel-run east.
In a statement this week, just before Sunday's start of Easter Week, the Tripoli churches called for an immediate cease-fire and said dialogue is the only way to end the two-month-old crisis.
Attempts to dislodge Qadhafi by force will only make him more determined to hang on, said Martinelli, an Italian who came to Libya just a year after Qadhafi seized power in 1969.
"He is a Bedouin, he is very strong," the bishop said, tapping his forehead to illustrate hard-headedness. » | AP | Sunday, April 17, 2011
WIKI: Christianity in Libya »
