HOMS (Gianni Valente/Agenzia Fides) — “A new era has begun for Syria. And it is a difficult time again,” said Archbishop Jacques Mourad. The monk of the Deir Mar Musa community, spiritual son of Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, was held hostage for months by jihadists of the Islamic State in 2015. Perhaps this experience made his Christian vision even clearer. And today, as Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Homs, what he sees and hears about the new suffering in Syria does not correspond to the dominant narrative in the media, especially in the West, which reports on a “regime change”, a successful and peaceful regime change with new Islamist leaders seeking international recognition after more than 50 years of the Assad clan ruling the country.
The dominant media coverage, for example, fails to mention the widespread violence and fear that once again overshadows the days of a large part of the Syrian population. A violence that — as Jacques Mourad admits — “seems to be a trap that all those who come to power here fall into”.
In recent weeks — the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Homs told Fides — people have disappeared, prisons are filling up “and we do not know who is still alive and who is dead”. Those accused of having colluded with the collapsed regime are being tortured in public. And he also reports “several cases of young Christians being threatened and tortured in the streets in front of everyone, in order to instill fear and force them to renounce their faith and become Muslims”. Crimes that are taking place far from Damascus.
Deir Mar Musa Monastery (the Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian), in Nabk, Syria. Photo by Bernard Gagnon – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.
