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MARONITES BUILD NEW CHURCHES IN SYRIA DESPITE ONGOING CONFLICT

16th February, 2016

A "gesture of revolt against death and destruction" is how Archbishop Samir Nassar, leader of the Maronite archdiocese of Damascus, describes the three chapels that the local Maronite community has decided to build in the Syrian capital.

The first of the three places of worship – all located in outlying neighbourhoods of the city – was inaugurated in recent weeks while the other two will be completed in the coming months.

Archbishop Nassar told Agenzia Fides the new churches represented a concrete "sign of hope and confidence in the future of the Church in Syria" in this "year of mercy and of great suffering".

In his statement, the Maronite Archbishop recalled the figure of deacon Camille, who was killed in March, 2013, by shrapnel from a mortar shell while he was near the church. After that event, Mgr Nassar recalled: "I said to the priests that they could leave the city if they wanted to, because the diocese had no right to keep them in that condition. They all told me: You remain, and we will remain, too".

Since then, said the archbishop, those priests who "cling to their mission under the bombs" also represented "the winning card and the guarantee of the future of a martyred Christianity that refuses to die".

– DAVID ADAMS (with Agenzia Fides)

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