Internally displaced Syrian children who fled Raqqa city stand near their tent in Ras al-Ain, Syria,
Photo: CNS Food, cooking fuel, jobs and, especially, hope are hard to come by in Syria, said two Catholic leaders reflecting on the 10th anniversary of the war.
“We feel forgotten. The sanctions have thrown the country further into desperation: 83% of the population is below the poverty line. We can’t do it anymore. Enough,” said Maronite Archbishop Joseph Tobji of Aleppo.
“We feel abandoned by the international community,” he told Vatican News March 17. But he said he and his fellow Syrians were grateful for Pope Francis’ repeated calls for peace and for prayers.
The 10th anniversary of the war was March 15. In the past decade, an estimated 585,000 people have been killed and more than 11 million civilians have been displaced, including some 5.6 million Syrians who have sought refuge outside the country.
Vatican News marked the occasion by interviewing both Archbishop Tobji and Cardinal Mario Zenari, the apostolic nuncio to Syria since December 2008.
“Syria is no longer the country I knew when I arrived 12 years ago as apostolic nuncio,” he said. “Today, going out onto the streets of Damascus, I see long lines of people outside the bakeries patiently waiting their turn to buy bread at prices set by the state; often it is the only food they can buy. You never saw such scenes before, not even in the hardest years of the war.”