Archbishop Elias Chacour Visits Pilgrim Church In Sherborn

Three-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize Archbishop Elias Chacour was at the Pilgrim Church in Sherborn Wednesday to give a talk entitled "What are the Things that Make for Peace? Building Peace in the Midst of the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict."

Archbishop Chacour, leader of the Melkite Catholic Church of Akko, Haifa, Nazareth, and All Galilee, is an Arab Palestinian Christian and a citizen of Israel.

He spoke about why the two nations are in conflict and the uncertainty of when peace will be brought between the two.

“Why is there a long, long conflict still raging producing only widows, orphans, handicapped children and many victims among our best young boys and girls?,” Archbishop Chacour said.

“The conflict was never about religious problems,” he added. “What is that conflict about? It is about identical claims of two nations of the same territory. That is the only conflict. It has nothing to do with God, has nothing do with [the] Bible, has nothing to do with Islam. It is two nations who have the same claims on the same territory and they are unable to solve the problem.”

Archbishop Chacour talked about what his mother told him when he was a young boy about not standing by idly to make peace.

“Peace means proactive people who get up, risk, bother themselves in order to bring about peace and justice to the poor who have been deprived, to the hungry for justice and peace,” he said.

"We don’t know when it will end, although we dream of the day when peace will return to the Holy Land."

Archbishop Chacour is the winner of the World Methodist Peace Award, the Niwano Peace Prize, and was Rotary’s Man of the Year in Israel in 2000.