Bishops’ refugee plea challenged

The Archbishop of Aleppo has challenged a letter signed by 84 Church of England bishops calling for the Government to take in more Syrian refugees.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Sunday programme, Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart, head of the Syrian Diocese of Aleppo for the past 20 years, said that Christian communities suffered when members fled the country.

He called on European countries to stop luring Syrians away from their home country and instead to concentrate on finding a solution to the civil war. The bishops should “ask that we may have peace and we may have a safe country as it used to be”, he said.

In a private letter sent to the Prime Minister in September, 84 Church of England bishops urged Cameron to increase the number of refugees that the UK is prepared to take over the next five years from 20,000 to 50,000, and to consider church involvement in a national effort to “mobilise the nation”. Frustrated by their receiving no more than a “cursory response” from the Government, the bishops made the letter public on Saturday 17 October.

Former Defence Minister, Sir Gerald Howarth, Conservative MP for Aldershot, said Archbishop Jeanbart has presented a different case, but one that must be heard. “It is madness on behalf of European countries to compete over who can take more of the uprooted and house them in their own countries,” he told The Tablet. 

“How many of the resettled will return? If we take that long-­standing historic community out of Syria, that will change the ­character of Syria, and damage the Christian cause.”