Libya: Church Reaps Benefits of Nation's Improved Foreign Relations

Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
21 September 2007

Tripoli
A new wave of religious freedom is sweeping across Libya, Christians say, after three decades of restrictions due to the mostly Muslim nation's hostility towards the West.
"People are respecting us. They accept us. We are free," Catholic Bishop Giovanni Martinelli, the Apostolic Vicar of the capital, Tripoli, recently told Ecumenical News International.
The 1969 revolution that brought Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to power led to church buildings being confiscated and then closed down. Catholics were allowed to keep only two churches, one in Tripoli and the other in Benghazi.
"The biggest church was a cathedral, but was turned into a mosque. They took all the churches with the revolution," recalled Bishop Martinelli.
But now there are Greek Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, and Anglican communities, said Bishop Martinelli, a Franciscan monk.
The international community imposed sanctions against Libya in the early 1990s after it was accused of involvement in the bombing of a US airliner over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. The UN Security Council lifted the sanctions in 2003 when the country accepted responsibility for the attack, and agreed to pay compensation to the families of the victims.
During the period of sanctions, the Vatican quietly continued a dialogue with Tripoli. "The sanctions were political," recounted Bishop Martinelli, who was jailed by the Libyan authorities in 1986 when the US bombed Tripoli.
Most worshippers are Africans, mainly illegal migrants, and Asians, and Martinelli now celebrates three services in different languages every Friday, whilst the Muslims go to their mosques. There are Christian services in Korean and English in the morning and in the afternoon there is a service in Filipino. On Sunday the Mass is in Arabic.
Recently, and in a spirit of ecumenism, the bishop allowed a Catholic church, which the secular authorities had closed and taken over after the revolution, to be given to the Anglican community in Libya. The church building, dating back to the 17th century, was rededicated on March 9.