“It is no longer a revolution, but anarchy and banditry. We are not Assad’s servants; the regime is just a historical phase. We support the Syrian people who are suffering and believe that violence has now exceeded all limits.”
These were the comments of Gregory III Laham, the Syro-Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, All the East, of Alexandria and Jerusalem, regarding the current crisis in Syria, stressing his firm condemnation of the violence witnessed last 25 April near Aleppo, at the end of the assembly held by Catholic bishops.
Meeting with journalists in the Syro-Catholic Patriarchate in Damascus – which John Paul II visited in 2001 - Gregory III excluded “problems among Christians and Muslims. The only moments of tension occurred in Homs, but Syria has been an example of religious freedom and civility for two thousand years.”
Syrian Christians, however, are suffering as a result of the Country’s crisis. “Many have fled to Damascus to escape the violence in Homs, while 14 Christians have been killed by Islamist groups which I would not call local, in recent months,” the Patriarch explained.
Gregory III then spoke about the Vatican’s position: “I would have like to have heard a stronger voice from the Vatican, but it has moral not political authority and could not have done more.”
The Patriarch strongly supported the UN’s monitoring mission, stressing at the same time that “the State has the duty to guarantee the protection the lives of all citizens.”
In the case of Syria, however, “the media have followed a very clichéd strategy. I had said that the army’s reaction had been limited and I was ghettoised,” the Patriarch concluded.