Society of Saint John Chrysostom: A prominent French bishop has accused Gregory III Laham, the Damascus-based Melkite Greek Patriarch of Antioch, of scheming with President Bashar al-Assad to block a planned Vatican peace visit to Syria by Catholic prelates in 2012. The Vatican announced at the end of its October 2012 synod on the Middle East that a delegation of seven church leaders, including Cardinals Timothy Dolan of New York and Jean-Louis Tauran of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, would fly from Rome to Damascus to express their solidarity with Syrians suffering in the civil war. Bishop Claude Dagens of Angoulême told Radio Notre Dame in Paris on 11 September that the patriarch promptly telephoned Assad, “of whom we know he is an ally politically and financially” and made an unspecified deal with him. The plan ran into difficulties and the Vatican announced a week later that the visit was postponed because of the “gravity of the situation” in Syria. Read more here.
