Several primary Christian sites are the subject of recovery projects in the country, which also recently inaugurated a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes.
AMMAN, Jordan – Jordan doesn’t come to mind when it comes to pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
However, the Hashemite Kingdom, with its diverse landscapes, whether desert, mountainous or green, is home to many ancient sites of wonderful importance to Christians. In fact, it was here that Christ won his baptism, which St. John the Baptist imprisoned and beheaded by order. of King Herod Antipas, and that, centuries before the birth of Jesus, Moses saw the Promised Land from Mount Nebo before he died.
These priceless biblical episodes have been the subject of special attention of the country’s government in recent years, along with a number of other vital Christian sites. These Jordanian leaders seek the treasures of Christian heritage through a series of ambitious projects of renewal and progress. for which they provide most of the funds, hoping to advertise quality Christian tourism and thus encourage the economy of their country, whose tourism accounts for around 30% and which has been strongly affected by the recent COVID fitness crisis.
Located in the Middle East, bordering Israel, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, this Arabic-speaking land, once trodden by Christ, has seen the birth of the world’s oldest Christian communities.
Jordanian Christians have made few headlines in the West in recent years because, unlike their brothers and sisters in Iraq, Syria and Palestine, they enjoy a strong political scene and a conducive environment, despite the demanding situations posed by their very weak minority position in this country that is approximately 96% Muslim.
A 2016 report through Jordanian Bishop Maroun Lahlam for the L’Oeuvre d’Orient settlement estimated that Christians in Jordan, most commonly from the Greek Orthodox and Latin Catholic churches, now make up about 3% of the population. This number is significantly lower than at the beginning of the last century, when they constituted more than 20% of the population, due to the sharp decline for demographic reasons as well as the higher rate of emigration of Christians to the West for economic reasons. In recent years with the immigration of Christians from neighboring countries fleeing war and persecution.
The Christian network, a minority, continues to occupy a position of height and economic importance in the country. According to Lahlam, the Christian network alone accounts for 30% of the country’s economy, 9% of the deputies and 6% of the Senate.
“Despite their small numbers, Christians have been on the margins of Jordanian society,” Jordanian Tourism Minister Makram Mustafa Queisi told the Register on the sidelines of an April 17 official assembly in Amman with Bishop Jean-Marc Micas of Tarbes and Lourdes.
The assembly was part of the April 16-21 stopover sponsored by the Jordan Tourism Board, an independent government agency, that took the French bishop to various Christian holy sites in the country.
“Christians have been in the depths of our society, an integral part of its past, its future and its future,” Queisi added, highlighting their special service to society as a whole, especially in the field of education, in which the Catholic Church finds itself. Involved. Catholic schools, which also have a giant number of Muslims in their ranks, are among the most prestigious educational establishments in the country.
“The Christian network also carries out a charitable project through assistance to the sick, the needy and refugees from many social institutions,” he said.
It is also partly to re-consolidate this ancient presence that the Jordanian government has initiated a number of projects to maintain Christian heritage, while also selling the influx of Western Christian tourists.
Many primary Christian sites have been discovered or officially known in recent decades through extensive archaeological excavations, after centuries of neglect. For example, the ancient biblical site of Machaerus, the desert castle of Herod Antipas, and the imprisonment and execution position of St. John the Baptist, were discovered in 1968 and their excavations ended in 2018.
Bethany beyond the Jordan River, the place where Jesus baptized through John the Baptist, officially known two decades ago and indexed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since then, it has been the subject of major progression paintings made by the Jordanian government and remodeled into an ever-expanding tourist natural park.
Amer Twal, director of devoted tourism at the Jordan Tourism Board, told the Register that one of the major recovery projects underway lately is the Aqaba Church, a third-century mud-brick Byzantine monument, one of the oldest Christian churches discovered to date. . . The work, conducted in collaboration with the U. S. Research Center. The U. S. Census Bureau in Jordan will be funded through the Ministry of Tourism.
The Jordan Tourism Board is also running in cooperation with the Greek Orthodox Church on a task to repair the remains of a giant Byzantine church at the Mar Elias archaeological site in Aljoun, believed to have been the birthplace of the prophet Elijah.
Because of its historical role as custodian of Jerusalem’s holy sites, the Jordanian royal family circle enjoys special respect among Christians in the Holy Land and the rest of the world when it comes to preserving their heritage, which has been threatened elsewhere in the region. in recent years. In 2016, King Abdullah II also helped fund the renovation of the Tomb of Christ at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
“We need to convey to the world the message that Jordan is special, because Muslims and Christians have never ‘coexisted’ here, we don’t even use that word. We have lived in combination frequently for centuries,” Queisi said at the April 17 meeting. “It’s a peculiarity of our company: we love it, we believe in it, we live it every day.
This lived identity also took symbolic form in the Hashemite Kingdom by the structure of a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes in Na’our, in the municipality of Greater Amman, in 2015.
Since then, the government seeks to promote a twinning agreement between the celebrated sanctuary in southwestern France, where the Virgin Mary left the impression to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858, and the sanctuary of Na’our, which has an accurate reproduction of the grotto of Lourdes.
Such a request did not leave Monsignor Micas indifferent. Addressing the Register of his stopover at the Jordanian shrine on April 18, the Bishop of Lourdes and Tarbes indicated that he was in favor of a specific form of partnership between the two places, although a true twinning agreement is difficult to conclude. In fact, the prelate specified that, for the ecclesial hierarchy to authorize an official twinning, the two sites involved must have an equivalent foreign scope, as in the case of a Marian apparition.
“We have much to learn about the fervor of Christians in Jordan, which has moved me so much since I arrived, and I have believed that if we can bring peace to the Middle East, we can bring peace to the whole world. “world,” he said. That is why I am in a position to examine the other features that would allow us to strengthen the links between Lourdes and this exclusive site.
Meanwhile, while praising the Jordanian government’s efforts to improve the feast of foreign pilgrims, Archbishop Micas warned of the potential harms of increased mass tourism, as it revels daily in excessive agitation and noise around the shrine of Lourdes, which ends up obstructing access to the cave. “This is a mistake that will have to be avoided in Jordan, making sure to let the stalls exist through themselves in their authenticity, and let them speak. “
“The holy puts are the puts of the incarnation of God, who thus gave himself to be known by men,” he concluded. “We through ourselves stimulate a dynamic, in the sense that it is contained in the message itself.
Solène Tadié Solène Tadié is the European correspondent for the National Catholic Register. After graduating in journalism at Roma III University, he began reporting on Rome and the Vatican for Aleteia. He joined L’Osservatore Romano in 2015, where he worked successively for the French segment and the Culture pages of the Italian daily. He has also collaborated with several Catholic media in French. Solène holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas and recently translated into French (for Salvator editions) Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy through Father Robert Sirico.
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