The Kataeb party and Lebanese Forces MP Ghayath Yazbeck reacted strongly to the odd remarks made by Jaafari Mufti Ahmad Kabalan about Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai, describing them as “unacceptable.”
Kabalan, Hezbollah’s unofficial spokesman, has called on Tuesday on the head of the Vatican’s diplomacy, visiting Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to “reform the Church,” simply because Rai’s last sermon did not please the camp he defends.
In his sermon on Sunday, Rai had once again pleaded for Lebanon’s neutrality and called for the election of a president who would “ensure that Lebanon is no longer a launching pad for terrorist acts that compromise the security and stability of the region.”
Rai’s words so displeased Hezbollah and its allies that on Monday, they boycotted the Christian-Islamic meeting in Bkerke with Parolin.
At the same time, in an “appeal” to the number two of the Holy See, Mufti Kabalan drew up a true indictment of patriarch Rai, without naming him. He practically accused him of “playing Israel’s politics” and “condoning the massacre of innocents in Gaza,” borrowing some of the Church’s concepts, but distorting them to suit his argument.
He praised the axis to which he belongs, presenting it as the defender of the Churches of the East, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Palestinian Territories, but also of “all the oppressed in the region.”
Kabalan concluded his denunciation of the Patriarch by asserting, “We will not accept that the Church exploits anything other than the word of God.” He called on Parolin to “reform the church and silence voices that speak out against the law,” adding that “defending rights of victims of injustice and torment are common to both Christian and Islamic faiths.”
The Kataeb party blasted Kabalan’s remarks, which it saw as “a flagrant provocation against the role of Bkerke and a detestable confessional note, unseen even at the worst moments of the 1975 war.”
The Kataeb accused the (Hezbollah) camp to which Kabalan belongs of “once again seeking to muzzle opposing voices” and warned against attempts to “give political conflicts a sectarian dimension.”
“The conflict in Lebanon today is between two projects. The first seeks to mortgage the country in order to tie it to its (pro-Iranian) axis and drive it towards ruin. The second seeks to save it and restore its sovereignty, making it once again a state in which the Lebanese have equal rights and obligations,” the Kataeb said in a statement.
On his X account, MP Ghayath Yazbeck fiercely criticized Kabalan, denouncing an “offensive speech that tries to seduce fundamentalists, targeting Maronites and their patriarch with vile rhetoric, masked by respect for Christ.”
In a statement, the leader of the Change Movement, Elie Mahfoud, criticized the Jaafari Mufti for “acting as spokesman for a group that has long since departed from the culture of the Lebanese Republic” and for “holding a confessional discourse.” He invited him to “return to the precepts defended by great Lebanese leaders, such as imams Moussa al-Sadr and Mohammad Mehdi Shamseddine.
