BREAKING NEWS

Envoy: Syria conflict casts shadow over Pope's Lebanon trip

By REUTERS

SEPTEMBER 10, 2012 18:52

VATICAN CITY - The civil war in Syria will cast a long shadow on Pope Benedict's trip to neighboring Lebanon next weekend but the Vatican is "tranquil" about his security after receiving guarantees from the country's fractious religious groups, the papal envoy to Beirut said on Monday.

Archbishop Gabriele Caccia told Reuters he hoped the situation in Syria would not drown out the main purpose of the trip - to focus attention on the problems and aspirations of the entire Middle East.

"You certainly can't close your eyes to a situation of violence. The drama in Syria looms over this trip but there is also the wider horizon of the Middle East," Caccia said in a telephone interview from Beirut. "The Syrian question takes priority because it is an emergency but the whole trip cannot be reduced to a political question regarding Syria," he said.

There are fears that the Syrian conflict could spill over into Lebanon and reignite civil war among the country's rival religious groups. Lebanon's population is 60 percent Muslim with the rest almost all Christian.

While there have been fears in some quarters that the papal trip is too dangerous, Caccia said "I am as tranquil as humanly possible" and the Church had "reasonable guarantees" that the visit would not be disrupted.

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