VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) – Pope Benedict XVI will resign his office on February 28, 2013. He will be 86 years old on April 16, 2013. Some early observers indicated his age would make him some sort of caretaker Pope. His pontificate has demonstrated the observers were wrong. He has been an indefatigable and tireless missionary of a Pope.
With the humility which has characterized his extraordinary papacy, the announcement was simple and straightforward. It was made to a consistory of his brothers in the episcopate, cardinals who had gathered in Rome where he will soon approve over 800 causes for canonization. He will become the first Pope since 1294 to resign his office. Here is his complete statement:
يحتفل موارنة لبنان غداً بعيد مار مارون. مناسبة تحولت لبنانياً إلى صورة ظلت تجمع رئيس الجمهورية ورئيسي الحكومة ومجلس النواب، حتى خلال أشد الأزمات عصفاً بلبنان. لكنها، للموارنة، لا بد أن تتعدى الصورة التذكارية، لتتحوّل مع كل الخضّات والاستحقاقات والانقسامات التي مروا بها، إلى مناسبة لمراجعة شاملة لدورهم في لبنان «للدفاع عن قيم […]
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Maronite Patriarch Beshara Boutros al-Rai arrived in Damascus on Saturday to attend the enthronement of Syria’s Greek Orthodox leader, Yuhanna X Yazigi, Syrian state television said. The Lebanese National News Agency meanwhile reported that Rai would hold mass at the Maronite cathedral in Damascus later in the evening. The ceremony for the new Greek […]
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Again and again, the nettle of civil marriage has poked through to Lebanon’s public sphere, and again and again, politicians have failed to grasp it. The past few weeks have been no exception. Calls for a large rally in Beirut yesterday afternoon in favour of civil marriage were merely the culmination of weeks of […]
