"I am writing in days full of death and suffering"

“I am writing to you in these days
full of death and suffering”

(ANS – Damascus – March 12) - The Salesian youth center in Damascus has entered its fourth week of forced closure: a totally unnatural condition for a place dedicated to socializing and educating young people, but necessary because of the dangerous conditions in the city. Many are the Syrians who have fled during these past seven years of war and the hemorrhage of the local population continues. From the Salesian center in the Syrian capital, the center’s director shares a new, bitter letter.

Dear brothers and sisters, I am still writing to you from Syria. I am Fr. Mounir Hanachi, director of the Salesian community in Damascus. I am writing to you in these days full of death and suffering for the Syrian people, who are suffering because of the war.

We are about to start the eighth year of this fierce war, which has caused so many deaths and displaced persons inside and outside Syria. Dear brothers and sisters, death continues in Damascus in these past weeks after the powerful assault of the Syrian national army to free Eastern Ghouta, an area controlled by rebels for over five years. The capital has suffered so much in these years by mortar fire and missiles that came over the schools and over the houses, and caused so many deaths of innocent children and civilians. We Salesians have suffered a lot on account of this, and we have been forced several times to close the doors of our youth center in spite of more than 1,200 young people and children who try to come to our center to find a place of serenity and peace.

In recent weeks the war in Eastern Ghouta has intensified. This is the fourth week that the Salesian youth center has been closed, and the children are shut inside their homes; the schools are closed, and life in the capital is semi-paralyzed.

In recent years we have lost so many families and so many young people who have left Syria seeking refuge abroad. Now the families that did remain are also beginning to look for ways out of Syria.

I invite all of you, dear brothers and sisters, to pray for Syria, the cradle of Christianity, and let us remember Damascus during these months. May the Lord give us his peace, through the intercession of Mary Most Holy, who will protect us and protects the children of Syria under her cloak.