The Maronite Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros Cardinal Rai paid tribute to Australia for opening its gates to various communities, including Lebanese, and providing migrants with opportunities to achieve their best.
‘Thank you Australia for your friendship to each country’ His Beatitude said from Canberra on Tuesday. ‘Australia should always be saluted for its multiculturalism’, he added.
Greeted by the Catholic Archbishop of Canberra and Goulburn His Eminence Christopher Charles Prowse, Arab ambassadors and diplomats headed by the Moroccan Ambassador Mr Mohamed Mael-Ainin, the Lebanese Chargé d'Affaires Mr Milad RAAD, and religious and community figures, Cardinal Rai visited the Parliament House under tight security and the War Memorial where he laid a wreath and prayed for Australia’s martyrs.
Speaking about the current situation in the Middle East, His Beatitude said that the region was going through a difficult time in which ‘those involved in acts of terrorism have lost their sense of humanity’, describing them as ‘mercenaries’ who were hired to ‘distort Islam’.
Cardinal Rai blamed unnamed powers for the spread of terrorism in the region and the world. Terrorist organisations ‘have not been established by heaven but countries that are providing them with weapon, finance, even political cover’, he said.
His Beatitude called on Arab countries to ‘find their way out of the vicious circle of killing and destruction’.
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