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DAMASCUS: President of the Syrian Arab Republic Ahmed Al-Sharaa paid tribute to Pope Francis, saying he had supported the Syrian people in “their darkest moments.”
The Argentine pontiff, who died on Monday aged 88, “supported the Syrian people in their darkest moments, constantly raising his voice against the violence and injustice they faced,” Sharaa said in a statement on Wednesday.
Syria’s civil war began in 2011 with a crackdown by president Bashar Assad on a pro-democracy movement.
By the time Assad was ousted in an offensive led by Sharaa on December 8, more than 500,000 people had been killed and more than half the population displaced.
Syria is home to a majority Sunni Muslim population, but also a sizeable Christian minority from several denominations, as well as other religious minorities.
Extending condolences to Catholics, Sharaa said of Francis: “His calls transcended political boundaries, and his legacy of moral courage and solidarity will remain alive in the hearts of many people in our country.”
Syria’s Christian community has shrunk from around one million before the war to under 300,000 due to waves of displacement and emigration.
The capital Damascus is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world but its Christian population dwindled to only about two percent, the Vatican said last year.
While the war began as a crackdown on peaceful protests, religion and ethnicity swiftly came into focus as groups battling each other became increasingly radicalized.
Syria’s Christian community generally either supported the government or sought to be neutral in the war, with Assad, himself from the minority Alawite sect, portraying himself as a protector of minorities.
Critics of Assad, however, accused him of using minority communities to prop himself up, and of meting out especially brutal punishment for any detained members of minority communities who dared to voice dissent.
Sharaa and the new government are under pressure from Western countries to ensure they are inclusive in their exercise of power.
Sharaa, now the president of Syria, was the former head of the country’s Al-Qaeda offshoot, a radical Sunni Muslim group widely proscribed as a terrorist organization.
Since Assad’s ouster, the most serious violence to hit Syria was a massacre on the Mediterranean coast in March, which according to a war monitor saw more than 1,700 people killed.
The victims were mostly members of the Alawite minority of ousted president Assad.