An open letter from an Arab Priest to his holiness Pope Francis

Wednesday, 08 July 2020

Your Holiness,

In the Open Letter I addressed to you from Damascus on March 13, 2020, I asked you this question:

“Do you still believe, until today, in the survival of Jesus Christ in the Arab World?”

Today, at the dawn of July 8, 2020, I see it my duty, as an Arab Catholic Priest, to ask you another, far more dangerous, question:

“Can you deny, as the supreme spiritual leader of the Church, that this specific Church has been,effectively, the single main cause of the gradual, profound, and general,excising of Christianity on the scope of the world, starting from the West—at whose headis, as usual, the United States of America—because of its unacceptable sliding into and collusion with the slime of politics and finance since the time of Emperor Constantine until today?”

Nonetheless, Jesus Christ has always been, and will forever be, unique in His beauty, truthfulness, love, and magnetism.

Your Holiness,

At the end of a text that I wrote on April 5, 2020, entitled: “An answer to a friend in the West,” I asked this question:”

In a week, we shall celebrate the resurrection of Jesus!

I wonder: When shall we celebrate the ‘resurrection’ of His Church?”

As we shall, in three days, celebrate the Feast of the great Syrian Saints, Peter and Paul, I allow myself to call upon you, anew, to visit Syria.

Rest assured, though, that you will not have to kiss the hands of some rich people, nor the feet of some African Chiefs, but, very simply, a handful of Syria’s holy earth… I offer to you on a wonderful piece of Damascene Broquart cloth, while I am standing proudly near our noble President.

Your Holiness,

Damascus awaits you.

Perchance this would be the dawn of the hoped-for ‘resurrection’ of the Church.

Fr Elias Zahlaoui,

Damascus, July 8 2020