The head of the Greek Melkite Catholic Church has warned of a mass exodus of Christians from Syria and Lebanon.
Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Youssef Absi told Aid to the Church in Need last week that, “they are desperate”. Christians are choosing to leave their homelands despite the Church encouraging them to remain.
Christians in Syria and Lebanon, particularly young people “no longer have confidence in their country” and “there is no light at the end of the tunnel”, he said. Between 2016 and 2021, Syria’s Christians decreased from 6.31 per cent to 3.84 per cent of the population.
In the last six years, the community has been particularly badly affected by the civil war in Syria, the pandemic and extreme economic hardship in both Syria and Lebanon.
The patriarch said the situation in Syria could be improved if the West lifted the sanctions which are affecting the civilian population.
In the Holy Land, the Christian community is diminishing further as increasing numbers flee violence and anti-Christian discrimination.
Today, Christians constitute less than two per cent of Israel’s population and a similar proportion of East Jerusalem and the West Bank’s population. Last week, the Vatican called for guarantees of religious freedom in Jerusalem.
Addressing a ministerial-level meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on 18 September, Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s secretary for relations with states, called for an internationally guaranteed statute on Jerusalem to ensure “the equal rights and duties of the faithful of the three monotheistic religions (Christians, Jews and Muslims), the absolute guarantee of freedom of religion and of access to and worship in the holy places, and respect for the status quo regime, where it applies”.
Archbishop Gallagher regretted “acts of intolerance” in the city “recently perpetrated by some Jewish extremists against Christians”.
“Any such actions must be clearly condemned by all governments, first and foremost the Israeli government, as well as prosecuted by the law and prevented in the future through education in fraternity,” he said.
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