Courtney McGrailThe Melkite Archbishop of Aleppo has described the exodus of Christians from the Middle East as apparently “apocalyptic and fatal”.
Insisting that he remains confident because of his trust in God’s promises, Metropolitan Jean-Clément Jeanbart described the “exodus of Christians” as “a form of deportation, condemning our faithful to a humiliating exile and our 2000-year-old Church to a deadly drying up”.
Claiming the sectarian purging of the Levant has happened through the terrorisation of the population, the destruction of homes and any ways of maintaining a livelihood, and the organisation by smugglers of convoys for the West, where the governments, he said, “appear to be either indifferent or unjust”.
It was his wish, he said, that Syria’s Christian community be helped to maintain its “prophetic presence in this beloved country”.