ACI Prensa Staff, Oct 12, 2023 / 18:00 pm
With the civil war that has been going on in the country for 12 years and the damage left by the February earthquakes in Syria, the Syrian Catholic archbishop of Aleppo, Denys Antoine Chahda, said the Catholic Church is working to “maintain the faith of the people” and to “motivate them not to leave the country.”
Nearly 51,000 people died in Syria and Turkey due to the earthquakes, which left damage estimated at more than $118 billion.
In an interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, Chahda said that “the people all took to the streets” because they feared they could be killed if their homes collapsed.
“They went out into the streets, they slept for days on the streets, others in their cars, others in churches, in parish halls. Many houses fell, a lot was leveled, many deaths,” the Syrian archbishop recounted.