Press Digest for Sunday September 16, 2012

The following are summaries of today's major stories published in the Arabic press. LBCI does not edit press digest articles for content, giving English-language readers insight into the various views expressed in newspapers across the Arab world.  

• Christian activists deny forming militias to support Assad’s regime     

Conflicting reports emerged on Syrian Christians forming militias to support Assad’s regime since March 2011.   

However, Christian activists in Syria denied such claims.       

One of them, named Nader, told Asharq Alawsat Daily that these reports only aim to present Syrian Christians as supporters to the “criminal” Syrian Regime.       

• Berri promises Pope Benedict a book on Christ’s visit to Tyre
  

An-Nahar Daily published on Sunday that while meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, Speaker Nabih Berri discussed the Christians’ situation in Iraq and the necessity to exert maximum efforts to ensure their stay at their homeland.         

Berri also told the Pope that Jesus Christ visited South Lebanon, to which the Pope responded: “you mean Qana.”    

Berri added: “I mean Tyre (Sour) your Holiness," referring to when Christ visited the city and healed the Canaanite woman.

"For those reasons Lebanon’s land is sacred,” Berri stressed.

The Speaker then promised his Holiness to offer him a book on Sunday entitled “In the Footsteps of Jesus-The Messiah in Phoenicia” by Italian writer Father Martiniano Roncaglia which tales the details of Christ’s visit to Tyre and other towns in Southern Lebanon.        

• Kabbani: for these reasons I didn’t receive the Pope at the airport   

The Kuwaiti daily Al Seyassah published on Sunday that the Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammad Rashid Qabbani said that he couldn’t attend the pope’s welcoming ceremony on Friday at the Airport because it coincides with the Friday prayers.       

The mufti stated that Friday’s khutbah was about the delicate subject of the anit-Muslim film and therefore he had to deliver it himself.     
“I don’t need a representative when President Suleiman is present," Qabbani added.