“If you want it in a simple way,” he said, “this is the big fight between good and evil. If you open the Book of Apocalypse you will see.”

The war which has raged since 2011 reflects the symbolic struggle in Revelation between the beast and the woman with a newborn child, he said.

“On one side you have a terrible dragon, just a blind force and power, which is the governments and nations and armies,” he said. “On the other side you have powerless people incarnated and symbolized as the woman and the newborn child.”

According to the United Nations, the war has forced about four million Syrians to become refugees, with more than 30,000 of them coming to Canada.

Tens of thousands of people, mainly civilians, have died in the war, including 21,000 deaths in 2015, according to the Syrian humanitarian group I Am Syria. Christians and other religious minorities are being particularly targeted.

“Christians are under pressure and under persecution,” Boulad said.

“We are suffering an injustice like all of the minorities. Christians are not the only ones suffering but they are a part of the game.”

Boulad, the superior religious Jesuit in Alexandria and provincial of the Middle East, made his comments in Woodbridge, Ont., at an event attended by about 300 people to raise money for the Catholic Near East Welfare Association in Syria and Iraq, as well as for work in Egypt overseen by Boulad.

The Cairo theology professor said that despite being “disgusted” and “furious” over events in Syria, as a man of faith he believes that the woman and child will prevail over the beast, as they do in Scripture.

“Good will overcome, love will overcome, justice will overcome,” he said. “But only after a tragedy which is happening underneath our eyes every day.”

The Church’s role is to remind us “to tackle the issue in a spiritual and theological manner,” especially regarding those suffering mental anguish, he said.

“The Church has power to warn and to fight orally,” he said. “In the short run (evil) will conquer, it will advance, but in the long run I believe in the victory of good over evil, of love over hate.

“This is my belief as a Christian and as a faithful.”

As Christians flee to safety, their representation in the region has declined to about two or three per cent of the total population, Boulad said.

“Christians are under pressure and under persecution,” he said. “Most of the Christians, they are emigrating. This is stripping the area of any Christian presence in the future.

“This is a clear genocide.”