Last update: 2022-04-22 09:39:49
Antioch, Turkey, 14 February 2013
Starting with the words of the prophet Ezekiel in the Bible: ‘Put away violence and destruction, and practice justice and righteousness. Stop your expropriations from My people, declares the Lord God’ and upheld by the teaching of the Fathers of the Church and in particular by the words of St. Basil ‘I pray you to let justice triumph […] and to be on man’s side, defending him and the truth’.
The Syrian Christian signatories of this pact are committed before the Syrian people:
- to remain faithful to national unity, by virtue of the very impossibility of separating from the rest of the people;
- to defend with every means possible the right of the Syrian people to freedom, dignity and the possibility to choose their own model of political and social life;
- to work to maintain the unity of society and the independence and force of the state, which may include and protect its citizens, regardless of their religion, creed, social or ethnic belonging;
- to resist tyranny in any form or political colour whatsoever together with the other Syrian brothers;
- to not act or pronounce oneself in such a way as to offend the culture of their people, which they have contributed to shaping, allowing it to reach a high level of progress, openness and tolerance
- to keep the commitments and moral, social and political pacts that have made the Syrian people a united national community, which will make an entity of its state under whose aegis all citizens will live in peace, whatever group they belong to;
- to protect their fatherland from external enemies and to contribute to freeing its occupied territories and to work so that the Palestinian people might achieve its national objectives and establish an independent, sovereign and free state;
- to not renounce the unanimous voice of the Arabs, to strengthen their cooperation and to not foster confessional or sectarian intolerance among the children of the Arab people to which they belong and among their Syrian co-nationals;
- to make of their churches communities of harmony, love and the defence of the right to justice, equality and to the equity of the persecuted and the oppressed;
- to continue to be a help to the weak and needy, supporting peace and understanding among people, stopping violence and everything and everyone that may threaten the right of the Syrians to life and dignity;
- to respect the religions and creed of all Syrians, to honour their prophets and messengers and to pay homage to their holy books, to protect their places of worship, to share their moments of joy and suffering, to cooperate with them;
This is a pact of faith and honour, irrevocable and binding, which we make with all consciousness before God and the brothers cosignatories.
Michel Kilo, Father Spiridon Tannous, Ayman Abd al-Nour, Samir Sattouf, Bassam Bitar, Elias Warde, Michel Sattouf, Rouba Hanna, Isam Elias, Bassam Ma’luf, Bassam Khoury
