A Catholic archbishop from the Syrian city of Aleppo is appealing to Western countries to stop taking in any more refugees and instead exert more effort into finding a resolution to the conflict.
Jean-Clement Jeanbart, Melkite Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo, said efforts to resettle the refugees in Western countries are hurting people in Syria who are already suffering, The Gospel Herald reports.
He specifically cited the action taken by Canada which has resettled 25,000 Syrian refugees in the past few months.
"We're not happy when we see the Canadian government moving refugees and facilitating their integration. It hurts us. A lot," he said, according to the World Watch Monitor.
"They [the West] pity the Syrians and the Christians. But do they really know about their problems? No, I don't think so, because if they did, they would have made efforts to end this war, to prevent it from continuing," Jeanbart said.
The archbishop said it would be better for the Syrians, especially the Christians, to remain in their own country.
The World Watch Monitor report notes that since 2011 when Syria's civil war began, the Christian population in Syria has been reduced by two-thirds—from 1.5 million to only 500,000 today. In the 8,000-year-old city of Aleppo, just a quarter of the Christian population remains.
"More than half the city's population left over the last four or five years," Jeanbart said. "It [Canada] has to help them stay where they are ... to find peace. And to get it [the war] over with these rebels, these terrorists, and drive both sides to talk. To find a political solution."
Jeanbart recalled the attack launched by Syrian rebels on Christian and Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo last month which left 19 people dead, including eight children, and injured 120 others.
"It was awful: A bomb that the rebels deliberately launched on a Christian neighbourhood ... has blown everything apart, destroyed countless houses," including that of a 13-year-old boy, Fouad Banna, who died instantly, he said.
Despite the mounting danger and devastation, the archbishop said he has no intention of leaving his homeland: "I pray, and my prayer gives me a supplement of courage and faith," he said.
"We will reconstruct our country. We want to build and stay," Catholic Philly quoted him as saying. "We want it to be our country and stay in this country where Christianity was born, and give a testimony of Christ's love and charity, and of the possibility to live together, as men believing in God and respectful of one another."