Jean-Clement Jeanbart, Syrian Christian leader, tours U.S.
During a recent tour of the United States, Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart of Aleppo, Syria, described the fighting that erupted Easter weekend, targeting the Christian quarter of the city and killing and injuring dozens. Three churches and several apartment buildings were destroyed and rockets hit Jeanbart’s offices, which sit less than 200 yards from the Old City, where the rebels are based. The archbishop spent the next week looking for some place to bury the bodies of a family of four, since the Catholic cemetery was a battle zone.
“I was without any words to say to my people,” the Catholic prelate said.
It was a low point amid the strife that has devastated Syria since 2011. “A country of blood and fire,” he calls it.
