VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI joined the international community in condemning a massacre in Syria, and he called for Christian and Muslim leaders in the country to guide their faithful in prayer and collaboration to restore peace and calm.

The massacre in Houla May 25-26 left about 108 people dead, including 49 children and 34 women. The U.N. Security Council May 27 condemned the massacre of civilians and, while not pinning all the blame on the Syrian government, it accused the government of inappropriately using heavy weapons in a residential area.

OTTAWA - The Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) is monitoring the plight of Christians in Syria and is poised to help should their position deteriorate.

CNEWA Canada national secretary Carl Hétu said the agency is carefully sifting reports from the Syria, especially in the city of Homs, a key battleground between Syrian and rebel forces. Many Christians live in Homs, Hétu said, and many have fled the city because of the shelling.  

“We heard some reports that people were actually forced to leave,” whether by forces supporting the Assad government or rebel forces, he said. “Some say it was Islamists. It’s not clear. There are different stories coming out.”

CNEWA, as well as Caritas Lebanon and the Islam Relief Fund of Canada, is accepting donations to help Syrian refugees, Hetu said.

For more information, see www.cnewa.ca.

VATICAN CITY - Mourning the death of Syrian-born Cardinal Ignace Moussa Daoud, who died April 7 in a Rome hospital, Pope Benedict XVI also prayed for the people of the Middle East "living through difficult times."

The 81-year-old cardinal was the retired prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches and the former patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church. His funeral was scheduled for April 10 in St. Peter's Basilica.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI has donated $100,000 to help the people of Syria.

The Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the Vatican's charity promotion and coordinating office, announced March 31 that the Pope made the donation to fund "the charitable work of the local church in Syria supporting the population" that has been hit by the ongoing violence in the country.

The council's secretary, Msgr. Giampietro Dal Toso, was to personally deliver the aid March 31 and meet with Melkite Patriarch Gregoire III Laham of Damascus, Syria, as well as other local church leaders.

JERUSALEM - Christians in Syria live in fear of a repeat of persecution like was seen in Iraq, said officials of the Pontifical Mission for Palestine.

"The same pattern like in Iraq is re-emerging, as Islamic militants are now kidnapping and killing Christians in Syria," said Issam Bishara, vice president of the Pontifical Mission and regional director for Lebanon and Syria. "Christians are concerned about the repercussions of the events taking place in the region. They fear that the experiences of Iraq and Lebanon -- which took place against the backdrop of a civil war -- could play out again in their own lands. These concerns haunt the Syrian Christians."

BEIRUT - Church aid workers scrambled to find housing for hundreds of Syrian refugees who have fled to neighboring Lebanon because of ongoing violence between Syrian forces and armed rebels.

About 200 families -- more than 1,000 people overall -- made their way to the border town of Qaa in the Bekaa Valley in northern Lebanon March 5 and were struggling in the region's near-freezing temperatures.

Father Simon Faddoul, president of Caritas Lebanon, told Catholic News Service March 6 that "women and children and the elderly are coming out in the cold, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, to seek safety."

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI urged Christians in the Middle East not to lose hope despite the serious difficulties they face.

"I extend my prayerful thoughts to the regions in the Middle East, encouraging all the priests and faithful to persevere with hope through the serious suffering that afflicts these beloved people," he said.

The Pope made his remarks when he greeted Armenian Patriarch Nerses Bedros XIX Tarmouni of Beirut and Armenian bishops from around the world attending their synod in Rome.

OTTAWA - The violence plaguing Syria has forced the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) to put many of its projects there on hold, even though Christians so far do not seem to have been specifically targeted.

But support for Iraqi Christians who fled to Iraq, many of whom struggle to survive in the slums of Damascus, is still ongoing, said CNEWA Canada national director Carl Hétu.

ANTAKYA, Turkey - Masked gunmen stormed the Syrian desert monastery of Deir Mar Musa, about 50 miles southwest of Homs, destroying property and briefly holding its inhabitants captive.

The monastery's website reported March 1 that on Feb. 22, approximately 30 armed men infiltrated the hillside monastery, holding community members at gunpoint as they searched for weapons and money.

Dating from the sixth century, Mar Musa was re-established by an Italian Jesuit priest in the early 1980s. The monastery and its church are staffed with Catholic and Orthodox nuns and priests, and the compound has become a center for Muslim-Christian interfaith dialogue.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a despot whose shooting and shelling of his own people cannot be defended, yet he may be the last line of defence for Syria’s Catholics.

For that reason, Syrian Church leaders are taking a cautious approach to the nearly year-long rebellion to topple Assad. They have been pleading for calm, for dialogue and for Western assistance to find a peaceful solution to Syria’s popular uprising as the nation moves ever closer to all-out civil war. So far, the dispute is political, but churchmen fear the fighting may quickly turn religious.

TORONTO - While Syrians endure shelling and sniper fire from their government, Iraqi refugees among them are hunkered down in the Sayyida Zainab neighbourhood of Damascus hoping they can get out before things get much worse.

“If you stay away from any mass demonstrations, stay away from any political activity, if you stay in your neighbourhood, in your church where the Iraqi refugees are, nobody will target you,” is the advice the Office of Refugees, Archdiocese of Toronto (ORAT) is giving hundreds of Iraqi refugees that Toronto parishes and religious communities have sponsored to come to Canada.

VATICAN CITY - As a sectarian conflict in Syria intensified, Pope Benedict XVI called on all Syrians to begin a process of dialogue and reminded the government of its duty to recognize its citizens' legitimate demands.

In Beirut, the patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church warned against toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, calling for dialogue to solve the crisis in the country.

WASHINGTON - Some priests have decided to stay in battle-scarred Homs, Syria, even as government forces intensified their strikes against the heart of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, said the Vatican's nuncio to Syria.

Archbishop Mario Zenari told Catholic News Service in an email Feb. 9 that he had been in almost daily contact with priests in Homs and that "with respect to their safety, the situation is, in certain respects, uncertain."