by english.alaraby.co.uk — Lebanon’s top Christian cleric said on Sunday the government should put an end to any meddling in the judiciary after the probe into last year’s vast Beirut port blast was halted by the latest of a series of complaints against the lead investigator. The investigation was frozen on Monday when a former minister wanted for questioning as a suspect filed a case questioning the judge’s impartiality. The move followed a smear campaign by Lebanon’s political class against Judge Tarek Bitar and a warning by a senior official of the powerful heavily armed Iran-backed Hezbollah group to Bitar that he would be removed.

Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, who has been sharply critical of Hezbollah, said in a Sunday sermon that political pressure on Bitar weakened the authority of the judiciary and could put international aid for Lebanon at risk. “We cannot insist on the investigation in the port crime and not support the investigating judge and the judiciary,” al Rai said. “It’s true that the government should not interfere in the judiciary but it is it’s duty to intervene to stop any meddling in the affairs of the judiciary,” he added.

بيان مجلس الامن ذكر باعلان بعبدا والجميع هنا يبتعد عن الخوض في الموضوع من* *السياسيين الى الإعلام لعدم المس بمشاعر الحزب*  *لن تبدأ مسيرة النهوض اذا لم نصارح حزب الله انه :  كفى*  _/ الرئيس ميشال سليمان /_

By Fr Danny Nouh — Devotion to Our Lady and praying her Rosary are non-negotiable aspects of the Maronite way In a year that most of us have often wished away thanks to the pandemic and its impacts, I want to pause and reflect on a beautiful juncture in our spiritual journey. We have just arrived at a month that every year I wish would never end; the month of the Most Holy Rosary, the month of October. My prayer is that the challenges we have faced this year have led us to the Rosary more and have helped us to come to understand the graces that we can receive through this devotion. We Maronites are predominantly a people of faith and prayer. For the Maronite Church, the Liturgy is our primary source of spirituality, inspiration and theology. Whereas the Western Church relies heavily on the writings of the Great Fathers who explain to us the Scriptural, Traditional and Dogmatic understanding of our faith, the Maronites take a spiritual understanding inspired by the prayers and hymns of saints and hermits, the blood of our martyrs and the everyday witness of our mothers and fathers.

This prayerfulness or spirituality has been handed down from Saint Maroun and his disciples through the generations and it stems from the monastic and ascetic life that they lived; this we have adapted without even knowing, in our ordinary, everyday life. As such the Rosary has naturally become the most important form of prayer after the Divine Liturgy. While we all know the origins of the rosary are not Maronite, it is said that the Arabic word for the Rosary is believed to have originated in a pagan or Muslim form in the East: “massbahat”. Today we all know it as Massabha (the word for Rosary in Arabic), which simply means to give praise.

Therese Comair explains the difficulties facing Lebanese people from her clinic 

By Sunniva Rose — thenationalnews.com — Therese Comair likes to talk about herself in the third person. “Therese is clever and hard-working,” she said when explaining how the ministry of health granted her a permit to continue running her village’s clinic despite retiring three years ago. “Therese serves everyone, whatever party or religion,” she said, sitting in her cousin’s living room overlooking the dramatic mountain scenery surrounding the picturesque village of Tannourine, an hour-and-a-half’s drive north-east of Beirut. “A sick man is a sick man.” Most people in Tannourine, a historic Maronite Christian refuge close to 1,500 metres above sea level with a natural reserve of Lebanon’s famed cedar trees and deep waterfalls near by, agree with Therese. “She’s not like any other employee who goes home after their shift. She’ll come out in her pyjamas to get medicine for you,” said Norma Younes, a retired schoolteacher.

For the tight-knit community of Tannourine, Therese, a short, energetic 67-year-old woman with bright blue eyes, has come to embody the local government-owned primary healthcare centre, where she has worked as a nurse and midwife for nearly 50 years. Though she retired in 2018, she stayed on as a volunteer, backed by the local government hospital and the municipality that provides her with a small monthly stipend. Villagers feared no one would replace Therese because of a government hiring freeze and the centre would close. Today, they rely on her services more than ever. Patients have tripled in the past two years as Lebanon’s devastating financial crisis drags on, according to Therese, who manages her stocks carefully. People have started calling from outside the village, as far away as Batroun, a coastal town a 45-minute drive away. “I can’t give everything to one person in one go,” she said as she listens to a voice note on WhatsApp from a man asking for a second dose of an antibiotic, Augmentin, for his baby, a few hours after a first request that morning.

By Trevor Filseth – nationalinterest.org — In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY), Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called for the United States to help address Lebanon’s political and economic crisis and avert further unrest. “We write to express deep concern about Lebanon’s worsening economic and […]

By Najia Houssari — arabnews.com — BEIRUT: The Lebanese Interior Ministry is planning to hold parliamentary elections on March 27, 2022, which is nearly six weeks before the end of the current parliament’s mandate. However, the final date for the elections has not been confirmed yet, which has added to the uncertainty many Lebanese people have felt toward their government — or lack of — for the past two years. Holding elections in March would shorten the legal deadlines required while potentially postponing the elections to April would conflict with Ramadan. “The political class is trying to flee from holding elections in the current circumstances,” election expert Walid Fakhr El-Din said. “The evidence is that we have entered the legal deadlines, yet the required dates have not yet been set. There is no time to amend the law, which, in practice, means the elections will be postponed.”

A similar run-out-the-clock scenario also played out in 2016, he said, which extended the parliament’s tenure. “There is whispering behind the scenes, among the political class, that the parliamentary elections may be postponed until after the presidential elections, which are scheduled for next October.” Observers of the electoral preparations also believe the ruling political class has no intention of including expatriates in the vote.