Lebanese bishops to elect new patriarch this month

Lebanese bishops will meet this month to elect a new spiritual head for Lebanon's Maronite church, the largest Catholic church in the Middle East.

The head of the Maronite Church, which has up to 5 million followers worldwide, exerts significant influence in Lebanon, a volatile nation where Christians make up about 40 percent of the country's 4 million people.

The outgoing patriarch, Cardinal Nasrallah Sfeir, was deeply involved in the nation's fractious politics. In particular, he took positions against Syria's years of interference in the country's affairs and against the Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah.

Sfeir, who is 90 years old, asked to be relieved of his post because of his age, and Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation last week.

A statement read out by the Rev. Youssef Tawk after a meeting of the Council of Maronite Bishops on Wednesday said the Synod of bishops will begin meetings to elect a new leader on March 9.

The meetings are expected to start with several days of spiritual retreat followed by discussions and the election of Lebanon's 77th patriarch. The process may take up to 15 days.

There are around 900,000 Christian Maronites in Lebanon, making the sect dominant among the country's Christians. Its founder, St. Maron, was a Syrian monk who moved to Lebanon's mountains in the fifth century.

Maronites have shared the rule of Lebanon with Muslims but had the upper hand after independence from France in 1943. Their political power, however, has dwindled in the last 15 years because of civil war, military defeats and migration.

Still, under a power-sharing political arrangement that ended the country's 1975-90 civil war, Lebanon's president must be a Maronite, making it the only Arab nation with a non-Muslim head of state. The prime minister's post is reserved for a Sunni Muslim and the parliamentary speakership for a Shiite.

Sfeir was elected Patriarch of Antioch for the Maronites in 1986.

A robust and energetic man even now, he is viewed by many in Lebanon as a strongman and was an opponent of neighboring Syria's dominance of the country.

Under his leadership, the Maronite church went further than ever before in criticizing Syria's political and military influence in Lebanon.

A statement issued by the council of bishops in September 2000 calling for Syria to withdraw its 30,000 troops from the country marked a turning point in Lebanese opposition to Syrian control. Syrian troops intervening in Lebanon's civil war first entered the country in 1976. They withdrew in 2005.

In recent years, Sfeir was also a strong critic of the Iran- and Syria-backed Hezbollah group.

Some Christian politicians have criticized him, saying he was too involved in politics and too supportive of Lebanon's Western-backed political coalition.