Bishop laments Western governments’ support of Syria’s Islamist rebels
February 07, 2014
An Armenian Catholic bishop who lived in Syria for the first 50 years of his life urged Western governments to cease supporting Islamist rebel movements in Syria.
“They are all 100 percent terrorists ... and they come to destroy countries and separate people and foment sectarian strife,” Bishop Kricor-Okosdinos (Augustin) Coussa of Iskanderiya (Alexandria, Egypt) said in an interview with Catholic News Service. “They come to destroy ... heritages and humanity, and to put hatred and contempt in people's hearts.”
Many rebels, he added, are “bent on installing Islamic extremist forms of rule” and are “foreigners” and “mercenaries ... paid to blow themselves up.”
Referring to the “governments of big nations,” Bishop Coussa asked “the governments financing the terrorists, instead of giving money for the destruction and killing of people, to give it for the building of hospitals and schools ... and toward creating businesses so our economies can flourish.”
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