SHAFAQNA – Since the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, dedicated to prayer and fasting, the Syrian Orthodox Archdiocese of Aleppo offers daily food for breakfast and evening meals to the poorest Muslim families living in Sulaimaniyah area. Some photos released by ankawa.com site document the distribution of the meals prepared by Christians for Muslim families. The distribution center is located in the local archdiocese, at the Cathedral of St. Ephrem the Syrian.
A message released by the media of the Archdiocese presents this initiative as a simple gesture to express the feelings of solidarity between citizens of different religious affiliations, in the hope of helping to restore with time the coexistence among the various ethnic and religious communities that characterized the Syrian society before the war.
Even the conflict led, in many cases, Christians and Muslims to carry out interfaith solidarity gestures, as in the case of Muslim orphan children who found hospitality in structures owned by the Church, after the building where they were staying had been devastated by the bombing.
The leadership of the Syrian-Orthodox Archdiocese of Aleppo is still formally entrusted to Metropolitan Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim, who died along with the Greek Orthodox Metropolitan of Aleppo, Boulos Yazigi in April 2013, while the two Archbishops were in the area between Aleppo and the border with Turkey.