Pope Francis’ Visit to Morocco Raises Hopes for Its Christians
MEKNES,
Morocco — On a Monday evening in a ground-floor apartment shielded from
the street by heavy yellow curtains, five people stood around a table
in the living room as a woman read from a pink leather-bound Bible in
Arabic.
Holding hands, they prayed
and read psalms, as a mandolin player accompanied their chants and a
2-year-old girl hit a ball playfully against the pink walls.
They
would prefer to worship in a church, but as Moroccans and former
Muslims who converted to Christianity, they are compelled to hide their
activities from public sight.
Morocco,
where Pope Francis will arrive on Saturday for a visit, is widely
perceived to be an unusually tolerant Muslim country. And to a certain
extent, it is.
It
is the only Arab country that constitutionally guarantees recognition
of its Jewish population, granting it separate laws and courts to
regulate matters related to family law. It also regularly organizes
events to promote interfaith dialogue and has ratified international
treaties guaranteeing religious freedom. The foreign-born, largely
Westerners and immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, can worship openly.
Moroccans, 99 percent of them Sunni Muslims,
cannot freely express atheistic beliefs or conversion to another faith.
Criticizing Islam remains extremely sensitive, and worship for
indigenous Christians, who number somewhere between 2,000 and 50,000, is problematic, particularly for those who converted from Islam.
Moroccan Christians have long been
ostracized, sometimes rejected by society and closely scrutinized by the
state. They are not officially banned from churches. But to practice
their faith openly is to invite harassment and threats, even — or
especially — from relatives.
While
almost no one is being arrested because of their beliefs these days,
most feel constrained from freely attending churches and publicly
performing rituals like baptisms, weddings and funerals in accordance
with their beliefs. But priests and pastors face possible accusations of
proselytizing, a crime in Morocco, simply by having Moroccans attend
Mass.
Voluntary conversion, while
stigmatized, is not technically illegal. Evangelism is. Morocco has
expelled dozens of foreigners suspected of proselytizing, or “shaking
the faith of a Muslim.” In 2010, the Village of Hope orphanage in the
Middle Atlas Mountains was shut down on suspicion that it was teaching Christianity to the children.
Attention to the plight of Morocco’s Christian converts is getting some
traction ahead of Pope Francis’ arrival, as they seize the opportunity
to advocate greater freedom to worship.
You can read the rest of the story on the New York Times' website.