Christmas services held in reclaimed territories

Christians in Aleppo, Syria, took part in Christmas services at the Old City’s St Elias Cathedral for the first time in five years, writes Ellen Teague. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his family visited a convent north of Damascus on Christmas Day. In Bartella, near the Iraqi city of Mosul, Christians held services in Mar Shimoni church for the first time since the town was retaken from Islamic State jihadists who had seized it in 2014.

However, lamenting the exodus of Christians from their ancestral homelands because of religious persecution, Catholic patriarchs of the Middle East pleaded for the international community to work towards peace and security in their annual Christmas messages.

Speaking from Lebanon, Cardinal Bechara Rai, patriarch of Maronite Catholics, warned that terrorists are “killing and displacing families and depriving them of their rights and dignities”. He called upon the UN to secure peace in the region and work for the return of Christian refugees to their homelands. Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III Laham warned that “today in the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity, the Christian presence is threatened … by wars that have given rise to this terrifying exodus”.