Occupied Golan Will Continue to Be a Syrian Land: Patriarch Yazigi

DAMASCUS, (ST)- Patriarch Youhanna X Yazigi of Antioch and All East for the Greek Orthodox Church on Monday presided over a mass held at the Mariamite Cathedral in Damascus on the occasion of Easter Monday (Renewal Monday).

Prayers were performed asking God to protect Syria and its people, army and leader and to restore peace to the country and the entire world.

Patriarch Yazigi said in his sermon “we pray for Syria and for the unity of the Syria with every inch of it, including the occupied Syrian Golan, this dear part of Syria which will continue to be in our hearts despite all conspiracies.”

“No one has the right to give occupation legitimacy or recognize the sovereignty of occupation entity on any occupied land,” stressed Yazigi, pointing out that the “occupied Syrian Golan, in the water of which Jesus Christ was baptized, was and will continue to be a Syrian land and a part of our East Christian identity.

 He urged the international community to lift the brutal economic siege imposed on the Syrian people, saying “it is time for the sound of war to stop in the land of peace…in this East which was entitled to spread the gospel of peace to the entire world.”

Talking about the issue of the two kidnapped Aleppo bishops, Patriarch Yazigi affirmed that the kidnapping the two archbishops of Aleppo Boulos Yazigi and Youhanna Ibrahim by terrorist groups  six years ago and the disability of the world to find any evidence leading to them  is a slap in the face for humanitarian values.

“The deadly shameful international silence towards this file is far more difficult and harsher than the effect of the kidnapping crime itself,” the Patriarch said.

Hamda Mustafa