Religion News Service is reporting that Jesuit priest and founder of the Mar Musa monastic communityin Syria, Paolo Dall'Oglio, has been kidnapped by Syrian rebels. Dall'Oglio is a well-known promoter of peace and dialogue among Christians, Muslims, and Jews. I visited his community in Syria in 2010 and interviewed him for US Catholic. You can read the USC interview with him here; there are some pictures of the monastery, with its ancient fresco murals, as well.
It's another sad chapter in the destruction of a country with so many wonders–religious, cultural, architectural–and so much diversity, religious and otherwise. I remember watching Palm Sunday processions of the different ancient Christian churches–Latin, Armenian, Maronite, Chaldean, and Melkite, to name a few–through the streets of the Old City of Damascus, which also featured numerous mosques and holy sites associated with different branches of Islam. Now I wonder what will become of it.
Pray for Syria. Pray for Paolo.
