Posted on 01/08/2023 6:12:32 PM PST by marshmallow
Archbishop Jacques Mourad worked to foster dialogue between Christians and Muslims before the advent of ISIS.
A Syrian priest who spent five months in captivity by the Islamic State jihadist group has been elected archbishop of a Syriac Catholic archdiocese.
The Synod of Bishops of the Syriac Catholic Church elected Fr. Jacques Mourad as Archbishop of Homs, Syria, it was reported Saturday. Pope Francis has given his assent to the election.
One of 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in communion with Rome, the Syriac Catholic Church has some 175,000 faithful in the Middle East and in the diaspora.
Archbishop Mourad said in an interview with Aleteia in 2015 that he “felt Jesus’ presence” during his months long captivity.
Mourad, 54, was born in Aleppo, Syria, and attended seminary in Charfet, Lebanon. He graduated from the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik and made religious vows on July 20, 1993, in the Syriac Catholic monastic community of Deir Mar Mousa Al-Abashi [St. Moses the Abyssinian], about 50 miles north of Damascus. He was co-founder of the monastery with Jesuit Fr. Paolo Dall’Oglio, an Italian priest who was abducted in 2013 and not heard from again.
Mourad was ordained a priest on August 28, 1993, and from 2000 to 2015 directed the ecumenical monastery of Mar Elian, near the city of Qaryatayn, about 62 miles from Palmyra. Its main mission then was to work for dialogue with Muslims.
The Assyrian International News Agency said that Mar Elian was founded in the 5th century as a Syriac Orthodox Monastery. In the 17th century, it became Catholic. In modern times, it was renovated by Fr. Dall’Oglio.
(Excerpt) Read more at aleteia.org ...
Pray for Persecuted Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere.
May God bless Archbishop Mourad
This fellow was lucky is wasn’t just killed. One has to ask what deal he did with his captors to remain breathing?
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