Patriarch pleads for peace in Middle East

July 29, 2015

Speaking recently in Boston, the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Antioch lamented the suffering of the Middle East's Christians and pleaded for peace.

"We have priests, monks, nuns, people and martyrs - their only crime is that they hold the entity of Christianity," said Patriarch John X. "We have brothers who were forced to [e]migrate, others obliged to pay tributes. We have people carrying their lives over their hands whilst living within the rockets range, which did not spare a school nor civilians, nor military people in Damascus and all around Syria."

"Protecting this land happens through looking with humanitarian eye to all what is happening, not in the eye of interests," he added. "From here, from this place, I raise my voice east and west and I say to all the world: let us live, let our people live, and do not make our land a circuit of conflicts. What is happening in our land is a blind terrorism that we are not used to."

 

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Further information:

• The Address of His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch to the General Assembly (Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America)