Heartfelt plea for peace this Christmastime in Syria

(Vatican Radio) Chaldean Bishop Antoine Audo of Aleppo, Syria is appealing to Christians the world over to pray and work for peace to bring to an end the two year conflict that is tearing his country apart. In a message and a brief interview ahead of Christmas, Bishop Audo told Vatican Radio’s Tracey McClure:

“We as Christians can live in peace and joy every time when we pray and suffer with the poor and serve them. Emmanuele, lighten our darkness and drive away our fears. Christmas is a time of peace and joy.”

Listen to the interview:

In these difficult times, the Church is nevertheless doing its best to help the needy and the poor in Aleppo.

“We are helping (the poor families) with different programs, the children with different activities with centers in different parts of the city, with Caritas and other organizations.”

Besides peace, the greatest need of the people of Aleppo at this time, he says, is fuel. “it is very cold in Aleppo. We don’t have any fuel…it’s very expensive. Especially for the hospitals, the schools, of course in the houses – it’s really a real problem, this problem of fuel. And we don’t have electricity and we have to use generators (which require) fuel and it’s very expensive.”

Bread is scarce and expensive too he says. “All the people have become poor generally in Syria… before, all the people were living (with a good standard) without famine. But now even the middle class is living like the poor in Aleppo.”

“It’s a very dramatic situation,” he says.

Bishop Audo says between one and two thousand Christians, many from the wealthier families, have fled the fighting in Aleppo. Most have gone to Lebanon where they can rent an apartment and are able to send their children to school.

When asked what relationship the Christians of Aleppo have with government troops on the one side and rebels on the other, Bishop Audo says the question is a complicated one.

“Christians want peace, reconciliation. They don’t want (to be) on one side or the other side. This is our message of reconciliation. We have to respect each other and to develop the sense of citizenship and accept the differences of the others. Not to oblige everybody to follow my way of thinking or (a particular) way of living.”

In asking Christians to pray for peace in his country, Bishop Audo says the conflict in Syria is not simply an internal one. “There is an international level, a regional level, so everybody has to do what he can to ask (for) peace and reconciliation. War is not the solution.”