Let us pray for our brothers in Gaza and Palestine and we feel pain for their suffering, and we implore God that peace, security and stability reign in our country and in the entire world, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, John X said at the Christmas Mass held in the Virgin Mary Cathedral in this capital.

Meanwhile, His Beatitude of the Melkite Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, Youssef Al-Absi, spoke during a mass at the Greek-Melkite Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Resurrection, about the sublime meanings of this date and the importance of feeling the pain and sadness that other people experience and work to comfort and help them.

The sanctions imposed on entire peoples and the silence kept over injustice and the policy of double standards are a sin, he noted.

He added that what is happening today in Palestine, especially in Gaza, is cruelty, injustice, oppression, tyranny, plunder and artistic murder being perpetrated against a defenseless people.

In other sermons in the provinces of Latakia, Damascus, Sweida and Aleppo, it was stated that the crimes committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza embody Israel’s brutality and arrogance, which does not distinguish between a child, a woman and an elderly person.

Unfortunately, all this barbarism has the support of Western powers whose history is full of these kinds of crimes against peoples who were colonized for a long time and whose resources were plundered, it was noted.

In turn, the faithful prayed that Christmas this year would be the beginning of the end of wars and the establishment of peace throughout the world.

They also prayed to God in the hope that Syria would recover from the aftermath of the war and that the unjust siege and difficult economic conditions would end.

jg/mem/fm