Aleppo (Agenzia Fides) – In Syria, the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches have already begun Lent, the liturgical season during which the Christian, with a journey of conversion, fully lives the mystery of the resurrection of Christ in his annual memory. For the third consecutive year, the beginning of Lent is lived by Syrian Christians in a country torn apart by civil war. “In our parishes” ssys to Fides Agency the Armenian Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo Boutros Marayati “we celebrated the beginning of Lent already on Sunday afternoon. There were many faithful and the participation was intense.
This year we will intensify occasions of prayer, penance and fasting to ask more forcefully that the path to the resurrection of Christ is blessed with the gift of peace”.
In the central part of Aleppo – says Archbishop Marayati – on March 3, a mortar shell fell near a school in the neighborhood of al-Khadilieh killing a child and an adult. While in a suburb previously controlled by the militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, activists from other anti-Assad factions found a mass grave with at least six bodies. Recently, the ISIL militants have abandoned some locations in the region of Aleppo following the offensive of other armed groups of Syrian insurgents. (GV) (Agenzia Fides 04/03/2014)
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