Church in Syria: ‘we trust in the Lord’

SYRIA – Homs awaits entry of rebels. Archbishop Mourad: we await their arrival, we trust in the Lord

Homs (Agenzia Fides) – “Today the shelling of the army was heard, but no one is circulating in the streets and the situation in the city appears calm. We are waiting for their arrival.” The words of Jacques Mourad, Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Homs, describe the climate of waiting and suspension experienced by the inhabitants of the neighborhoods of Homs. What is expected are the anti-government militiamen who continue their relentless advance and are now targeting Damascus.

“In Homs there is a slowdown,” explains the archbishop, a native of Aleppo, ”only because there are still those in the city from the government army waiting for the order to withdraw. That’s why the others have not entered, but they are all around, and here the game is already over, thank God.”

Jacques Mourad has been the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Homs since March 2023. A monk of the Deir Mar Musa community, founded by Roman Jesuit Paolo Dall’Oglio (who disappeared on July 29, 2013 while in Raqqa, at that time the Syrian capital of the so-called Islamic State).

Father Jacques in May 2015 had been kidnapped by a jihadist commando and had endured long months of captivity, first in solitary confinement and then together with more than 150 Christians from Quaryatayn, who were also taken hostage in the territories then conquered by Daesh, and who like him had signed with the Islamic State jihadist militiamen the “Protection Contract” with the Islamic State jihadist militiamen.

“Now we are serene, and we trust in the Lord. We hope that we will be able to celebrate the upcoming feast of the Christmas of Jesus in freedom. As we look forward to the Nativity of Jesus, we dream that indeed there can be a new birth for Syria as well, for the present and the future. A Syria that is respected by the international community, and where living conditions can improve. For now this appears to be a dream. But for us it remains a very concrete expectation.”

Syria, argues the online Middle East news outlet Anbamed, appears to be “in the process of territorial disintegration. The advance from the north by jihadists supported by Turkey and other NATO countries continues.” “Daraa and Sueidaa in the south are also out of regime control. Opposition formations have intimated to local government forces to surrender and switch to the side of the uprising. The oppositions in these two southern cities are not of the same jihadist persuasion as Tahrir Sham. Daraa was in 2011 the rebel city that had sparked the March 25 uprising. Sueidaa, on the other hand, is a Druze-majority city and had never participated in the uprising movement.”

In the northeast, a region under the control of Kurdish-led military forces, “fighters have taken control of all positions that were previously under the control of the government and Iranian-allied militias.” There are military forces and garrisons operating on the Syrian scene-including those referring to the U.S., Russia, and Iran-that would end up facing each other in an eventual dissolution of the apparatuses under President Bashar al Assad.

Source

• (GV) Fides News Agency (07/12/2024)