Trouble for Lebanon's Maronites

When Christian missionaries were about to embark on a mission to convert the Saracens, St. Francis of Assisi told them: " The Lord says: Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Begin neither quarrels nor disputes." Nothing could be further from the thoughts of Nasrallah Sfeir, 86, than to preach about missionary work. Sfeir, the patriarch of the Maronites, Lebanon's largest Christian community, faces an entirely different problem: His flock is abandoning him.

Sfeir shuns the bustling streets of Beirut, choosing instead to reside in a magnificent sandstone palace in the Cedar Mountains, where he lived in the summer during the war with Israel. He is still wrestling with the consequences today. Sfeir is both a religious leader and a politician. Black limousines are regularly parked in front of his estate, mainly those of wealthy Christians seeking the patriarch's religious and political advice.

His visitors enter a long hall lined on both sides with ornamental wooden benches. The Maronite patriarch sits beneath a portrait of Pope John Paul II. He looks tired, as an advisor whispers into his ear. Then the old man speaks, quietly but clearly and with sharp language. He criticises Iran and Syria for abusing Lebanon as a proxy battlefield, and Hezbollah for having established, with Iran's help, a state within a state. These things are unacceptable, says Sfeir. " We are the smallest and weakest state in the Arab world! "

The patriarch's voice is melancholy as he discusses the consequences of political upheaval, especially the growing numbers of Christians now leaving Lebanon. According to Maronite church leaders, more than 730, 000 emigrated during the Lebanese civil war from 1975 to 1990, with another 100, 000 abandoning the country this past summer.

According to Sfeir, other Christian denominations, including the Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Armenian Christian communities are also dwindling, leading to a decline in Christian political influence in Lebanon. " It is unlikely, " says Sfeir, " but if Hezbollah were to assume power one day, the Christians in this country would emigrate in even greater numbers."

If that happened Lebanon, traditionally a safe haven for minorities, would lose one of it oldest religious communities. In the ninth century the Maronites, whose name is derived from St. Maron, a Syrian monk, fled into the mountains of Lebanon to escape Muslim persecution, and in the 12th century they joined the Roman Catholic Church.

" We even survived the Crusades, " says the patriarch. " Now the war is driving people away. They are losing hope. But we have also seen the opposite taking place. We have had Christian heads of state in Lebanon since the 1940s -- the first time this has happened in four centuries -- and our Muslim fellow citizens have had no objections."

Sfeir is referring to Lebanon's fragile proportional system of government, under which the president must be a Christian, the prime minister a Sunni and the speaker of parliament a Shiite. But the system, put in place in 1943, has long since been rendered obsolete by demographics. Sfeir senses that the political balance of power has also changed -- and does not favor Christians.