News - Middle East: The Prefect of the Dicastery for the Eastern Churches in the Vatican, Archbishop Claudio Gugerotti, said that the Westerners bear a heavy responsibility for destabilizing the Middle East, with their tendency to export their culture and ask its peoples to conform their lives to it

"As Western Catholics," the Prefect said, "we apologize for supporting this myopic approach. We pay tribute to your heroic efforts to be witnesses to our common faith despite difficulties of all kinds.”

The Vatican News website indicated that 250 representatives of the Middle Eastern Catholic Churches had gathered in Nicosia for the opening of the symposium "Rooted in Hope", organized to mark the tenth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's post-synodal apostolic exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente.

The Vatican News pointed out that what worries Archbishop Gugerotti is “the diaspora of Middle Eastern Christians, which is caused by the current tragic situation, deeply affecting their daily lives."

Last year, Pope Francis said that the West cannot be described as an "example to follow" because it took the wrong path, describing it as the greatest graveyard of humanity.

He also said last month that the interests of multiple "empires" are driving the war in Ukraine, not just Russia, adding that the conflict was fueled by "colonial interests, not only because of the Russian Empire, but because of other empires as well."