LEBANON: Church protects the “Valley of Saints”
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The Qadisha Valley, the “Valley of the
Saints”
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The deep Qadisha Valley in the Northern Lebanon has a
good claim to the title “Valley of the Saints.” For more
than 1500 years it has been the place where Christians
would hide from their persecutors, where hermits would
hide from the sins of the world, and where the
Patriarchs of the beleaguered Maronite Church held their
masses and had their graves.
Most of the land
is still held by the Church, but five percent is in
private hands – and this most beautiful of valleys is
now under serious threat from development, roads,
restaurants, hotels and even, one proposal suggested,
nightclubs.
The success of the Sacred Gift of
the
Harissa Forest
in 2000 has now led the Maronite Church to look
seriously at making the Qadisha into a second Maronite
Protected Environment.
Meetings held in June
2003 revealed there was a possibility of the Government
of Lebanon recognising both Harissa and Qadisha as the
eighth and ninth National Reserves in Lebanon in a
unique special legal arrangement with the Church.
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