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CV NEWS FEED // Archbishop Jean Abdo Arbach of the Diocese of Homs, Syria, has decried the massacre of his people.
“We don’t want any more bloodshed,” he said. “We call for unity and reconciliation. After 14 years of war, we don’t need another conflict.”
Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) shared the statement from Archbishop Arbach in a March 14 press release. They added that the archbishop blamed Syria’s new government, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), for the massacre. ACN states that HTS carried out the attacks after an ambush on government security forces.
As CatholicVote previously reported, violence broke out March 6 when HTS’s General Security Forces clashed with remnants of the Bashar al-Assad regime, which fell in December 2024. During the clash, the Security Forces slaughtered roughly 2,000 minority civilians, both Alawite Muslims and Christians. (Reports have varied from 1,500 to 3,000 in their casualties estimates.)
He also said Syrian civilians are suffering, especially amid food, medicine, and job scarcity
“Many people are asking when this will end,” he said. “They can’t see a future and they want to leave.”
The archbishop stated that the Church is helping people both spiritually and physically, offering material help where it can. He also noted that there is concern that the presence of Christian communities in the Middle East will be erased completely.
“I encourage people to wait, and to stay firm, because without the Christians, there can be no future for Syria,” he said. “Christians are the roots of Syria, and Syria is the cradle of Christianity.
“In Damascus, we can still find the places where Saint Paul converted to Christianity in the first century. We still have first-century churches and monasteries, and we have kept Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, alive.”
Earlier this month, the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem expressed concern that Armenian Christians in Syria would be forced to leave the country due to the persecution, which would uproot the historic community once more. Armenian Christians have lived in Syria since they fled from genocide in 1915.
The Patriarchate called the Armenian Christians’ presence in Syria “a sacred witness to survival, perseverance, and the continued struggle for dignity in the face of genocidal persecution.”
In the same statement, the Patriarchate called on the international community to urgently act to protect Christians in Syria.
“These communities are not just ethnic minorities; they are a vital part of the Christian presence in the larger Middle East, a presence that has endured for centuries,” the Patriarchate stated. “The security of our Christian brothers and sisters in Syria must not be overlooked or treated as a secondary concern in the midst of political shifts in the region.”
ALEPPO CARMELITE NUNS DECRY VIOLENCE IN NORTHWEST SYRIA: THE MASSACRES ‘DEFY WORDS’
