ALEPPO – Syrian Muslim and Christian children from the city of Aleppo will come together next October 6 to pray for an end to the ongoing war, and draw pictures about their lives to send to Pope Francis.
“We have invited a large number of children to imagine and produce designs about what they are living, in order to send them to the Holy Father, and perhaps copies and a summary of their feelings to the United Nations and the most important supporters of this terrible war,” Catholic Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart of Aleppo told Crux on Tuesday on Tuesday, September 27.
“We’ll try to help them understand that they’re very important for the Church and the country,” Jeanbart said.
“Together we will pray for peace and some consolation for the people who are suffering.”
About 1,000 children are expected to unite in the prayer called for by different Christian denominations who sent out the invitation through the few schools that are still running.
At the event, Muslim and Christian children will hear about the importance of learning to live together as neighbors and “to fight together.”
“But not to fight a war that destroys, but to fight to build a country worth living in,” he said.
The Syrian civil war began in March 2011, and has since then claimed at least 280,000 lives, though high estimates put the number close to half a million people.
Some 4.8 million have become refugees, half of them children. Another eight million Syrians are estimated to have been internally displaced by the violence.
Aleppo has been under siege for months, threatening the lives of 250,000 civilians, almost half of them children.
Those who survive the bombardments are dying of hunger or lack of medicines.
“What happens in this barbarian fighting and killing is not human,” Jeanbart said.
“We need some humanity,” he added.
Archbishop Boutros Marayati, head of the Armenian Catholic archieparchy in Aleppo told Agenzia Fides that the Oct. 6 initiative will involve primarily school children, who will also put their signatures and fingerprints on an appeal to ask world rulers to end the massacres.
“But above all, they will pray,” Marayati said. “They will pray for all of their peers. And we trust in the fact that children’s prayer is more powerful than ours.”
“New blood will be shed if the powers behind the two warring parties do not decide to really put an end to this dirty war,” he stated.