Pope's €100,000 donation will help young couples in Syria who decide to get married 'despite the crisis' says Aleppo priest

A donation of €100,000 made by the Pope for the poor in Aleppo will be given to the hundreds of young couples who have decided to get married "despite the crisis in Syria," confirms parish priest in Aleppo.

Fr Ibrahim Alsabagh described the donation, made during a Mass for Syria at the close of the Pope’s retreat, as a “sign of hope for us.”

Young couples are “suffering greatly from poverty and continue to go hungry,” Fr Alsabagh told Italian Catholic radio station InBlu on 15 March.

“The first thing that came to mind was a project to aid these young couples of Aleppo in any way possible,” he said.

Fr Alsabagh, who is parish priest of the Latin rite St Francis of Assisi Cathedral in Aleppo, said that, more specifically, the money would be used to provide young families with food packages; to pay utility bills; health bills and to cover the costs of pregnancy care.

The Pope made the donation at the end of his Spiritual Exercises last week in Ariccia with the Roman Curia, where he celebrated a Mass for Syria before returning to the Vatican. The donation was distributed by the Papal Almoner.

This month marks six years since the beginning of Syria’s civil war, which has claimed the lives of over 500,000 people and forced more than a quarter of the country’s 21 million population to flee into neighbouring countries or to seek asylum in Europe.

Earlier this week, Unicef reported that children in Syria were paying the “highest price” in the six-year war and, with child deaths increasing by 20 per cent during 2016, their suffering had hit “rock bottom”.

On 15 March, two suicide bomb attacks in Damascus killed at least 31 people and left many more injured. The attack is the second suicide attack in the Syrian capital within five days.

PICTURE: A man carries a child injured in an airstrike on Aleppo. The donation will be used to help the hundreds of young couples who are attempting to bring up their families in the formerly rebel-held city of Aleppo which has been heavily bombed leaving many homeless and destitute.