(Pope Benedict XVI conducts an open air mass at Beirut City Centre Waterfront, with two large mosques in the background September 16, 2012. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir)
Pope Benedict urged Arab leaders on Sunday at a huge open-air Mass in Lebanon to work for reconciliation in a Middle East riven by Syria’s civil war and blazing with fury over a film mocking the Muslim Prophet Mohammad.
“May God grant to your country, to Syria and to the Middle East, the gift of peaceful hearts, the silencing of weapons and the cessation of all violence,” the pope said in a prayer after Mass that organisers said was attended by 350,000 people.
Activists say more than 27,000 people have been killed in Syria’s 18-month-old, mainly Sunni Muslim uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, who belongs to the minority Alawite sect that grew out of Shi’ite Islam.
Few Christians, who form about 10 percent of Syria’s population, have joined the uprising, fearing that it could bring hostile Islamists to power in a fight raging just 50 km (30 miles) east of Benedict’s Mass in Beirut.
