Adobe Stock
CV NEWS FEED // Fr. Jihad Youssef, a prominent Catholic priest from the Deir Mar Musa monastery in Syria, has called on Christians and Muslims to unite in fasting and prayer for peace following a violent outbreak that has deeply impacted the Christian community in the country.
Speaking to AsiaNews, Fr. Youssef, a Syrian Maronite who has lived with the al-Khalil monastic community since 1999, extended his condolences to the families of the victims — “defenseless civilians” who had suffered “martyrdom.” He urged all parties “not to return to the same battles and revenge” of the past, warning that “revenge does not bring justice.”
“I am speaking here as a Syrian citizen,” he told AsiaNews, “as a Christian man, as one of you, as an Alawite, as a Sunni, as a Druze, as a Kurd, as an Arab, Sunni, Assyrian, Armenian, Eastern, Turkmen — all those who live on Syrian land, all those who feel and are in pain with each other.”
Fr. Youssef’s Catholic community, located 62 miles north of Damascus, follows the Syriac rite and is dedicated to fostering dialogue between Christianity and Islam. The monastery, Deir Mar Musa (St. Moses the Ethiopian), was restored by Italian Jesuit Fr. Paolo Dall’Oglio, who founded the community to promote harmony and friendship between the two faiths.
Fr. Dall’Oglio, a vocal critic of Assad, was exiled in 2011 but secretly returned to opposition-controlled areas in 2013. According to Al-Monitor, he disappeared that summer while visiting the Raqa headquarters of a group that later became known as the Islamic State to negotiate the release of kidnapped activists. Conflicting reports later emerged about his fate, with some suggesting he was kidnapped, killed, or handed over to the Syrian government. No definitive news has surfaced since Assad’s fall.
In his conversation with AsiaNews, Fr. Youssef encouraged Syrians to put aside past injustices, to “make peace and forgive,” and to build a future informed by the lessons of the past. He urged both Christians and Muslims to participate in a vigil of fasting and prayer “for peace and reconciliation on the coast and throughout the country.”
Violence erupted last week between factions loyal to Syria’s former President Bashar al-Assad and the new regime in Damascus. More than 800 deaths were reported in Tartus and Latakia, two predominantly Alawite coastal cities that were once strongholds of the previous regime.
AsiaNews also reported that Christian victims included Fr. Yohann Youssef Boutros, a Greek Orthodox priest at the Church of St. Elias in Tartus, who was reportedly killed by gunmen linked to the new Syrian government under President Ahmad al-Sharaa. In Banias, an entire Christian family was massacred, and a Syrian Maronite man, Tony Khoury, was shot in the face and killed in the village of Dahr Safra.
According to AsiaNews, “scores of Christians – priests, mothers, children – were caught up in the violence triggered by a revolt that broke out in Assad’s former stronghold.”
