Patriarch Rai and “Non-Christian Foreigners”

Patriarch Beshara Rai in today’s Sunday sermon:

We ask officials of monasteries, religious Christian institutions, in a bid to preserve their sanctity, inviolability and message, not entrust their protection to non-Christian foreigners or house them,

Unlike what you might think, I’m not enraged at the directive itself (after all, in fairness, mosques don’t employ non-Muslim caretakers either). The problem is not the message, it’s the timing and the implications of what he said: It’s as if he’s saying that the man killed Myriam because he was not a Lebanese Christian. This is not the kind of stuff you say from a pulpit after a hideous crime has been committed. This is what angry relatives say, not what responsible religious leaders preach.

I hesitate to criticize Patriarch rai because I don’t want to offend Christians, and please forgive me If I’m insulting you by criticizing your religious leader. But the man really worries me. He calls in public for Christians not to sell their lands to non christians, he supports Hezbollah’s weapons and the Assad regime, he believes in conspiracy theories and is now is asking Christians in public not to employ Muslims because a Muslim man just killed a Christian woman.

I’m sure he’s a fantastic man of God, but can someone please get him a political PR advisor?