Gregory III Laham, Patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, has resigned. During his patriarchate he became notorious for calling the Melkite Greek Catholic Church the “Church of Islam,” as is noted in the article below. He also claimed that Islamic jihad attacks against Middle Eastern Christians were a “Zionist conspiracy against Islam,” and exclaimed that “no one defends Islam like Arab Christians.”

That was certainly true of himself, but Gregory III Laham was not alone: the close relationship between some Middle Eastern Catholic bishops, including Melkites, to the “Palestinian” jihadis and other Muslims in the Middle East should be an embarrassment to the entire Catholic Church, but of course it isn’t. Melkite Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, who died on January 1, 2017, was such a stooge for the “Palestinians” that he was known as the “Chaplain of the PLO.”

I have personally never encountered such rabid Jew-hatred as I did in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and from other Middle Eastern IslamoChristians, including prelates: when one Melkite bishop was asked why he objected to my collaborations with Pamela Geller, he explained simply, “She’s a Jew,” and that was a good enough explanation for the assembled clergy. While Christians in Muslim countries are being slaughtered, exiled, subjugated, and/or forced to convert in numbers never before seen in history, all by Muslims acting in the name of Islam and in accord with its teachings, these hate-filled clerical dhimmis carry water for their killers and rail against Jews and Israel, where Christians live as full citizens.

In the end, Patriarch Gregory was forced to resign not for his apologetics for jihad or fanatical Jew-hatred, but because of his high-handedness and mismanagement. His pro-jihad stance and Jew-hatred are widely shared in the Melkite Church, and likely will be by his eventual successor.

“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

“The Gregory-era, Patriarch of the ‘Church of Islam’, comes to an end,” by Gianni Valente, La Stampa, May 8, 2017 (thanks to Robert):