ICC Note: Reports have been given to the European Parliament stating that Father Paolo Dall’Oglio is still alive after his kidnapping in July. There had been previous reports that he had been killed, but those were never confirmed. Father Dall’Oglio has been working actively in Syria for most of the past 30 years. This good news comes days after reports stating two other bishops, kidnapped since April, were also believed to still be alive and held in captivity in southern Syria. The situation remains difficult for the Christians who have lived on this land side-by-side with their Muslim neighbors for centuries and only recently have become the targets of direct persecution because of their faith by Islamic extremist groups who want to drive them out of Syria.
10/02/2013 Syria (World Watch Monitor) – An Italian Jesuit priest who went missing in Syria several months ago is still alive, according to an Assyrian priest speaking at the European Parliament on Tuesday (October 1).
Archdeacon Emanuel Youkhana of the Assyrian Church in the East said the latest reports from inside Syria were that Father Paolo Dall’Oglio is alive, although no more detail was given about his condition.
Reuters reported on July 29 that Dall’Oglio had been abducted by Islamists with links to al-Qaeda in the northern Syrian city of ar-Raqqah, but the Vatican would not confirm the news.
A month later, several reports claimed that the priest had been killed, although the Vatican remained tight-lipped.
The UK-based pro-opposition Syrian Observatory of Human Rights recently reported that the priest was kidnapped after a visit to the ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, linked to Al-Qaeda) rebel group headquarters, as did All4Syria – an agency which operated as an anti-Assad online news outlet for several years before the outbreak of war in Syria.
Dall’Oglio is not the only priest in Syria whose whereabouts and wellbeing have created headlines in recent months. Bishops Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yaziji were kidnapped in April and have yet to be released.
Fr. Youkhana was a guest speaker at the presentation of a report, “Vulnerability Assessment of Syria’s Christians” to a packed room of Brussels parliamentarians, policymakers and NGOs by Open Doors International (ODI).
ODI is an international organisation that works to support Christians persecuted for their faith around the world, and has been supporting partners and churches in Syria since 2008.
It currently has a ‘Save Syria’ campaign, in 13 countries, with more than 150,000 signatures on a petition for Western governments to keep the plight of the Church at the front of their thinking.
Beyond the kidnappings of leading Christian figures inside the country, the situation for the nation’s Christian minority is precarious.
Open Doors spokesperson Esther Kattenberg said Syria’s Christians are “squeezed” in between a rock and a hard place, neither feeling comfortable siding with the widely condemned current al-Assad government, nor the various factions – many of which are Islamists with links to al-Qaeda – which make up the opposition.
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