In late June, Syrians experienced the worst attack on a Christian church since 1860

On June 29, 2025, I attended a church service at St. Moses the Black Orthodox Church in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. St. Moses is an Antiochian church, also known as the Church of St. Peter, and harkens back to ancient Antioch, Syria (now Antakya, Turkey)—the birthplace of Christianity.

Quite appropriately, as the pastor of the church, Father Paul Abernathy explained to the parishioners that June 29 is the feast day and the day of the martyrdom of both St. Peter, the founder of the Chrisian Church, and St. Paul who famously was converted to the faith on the road to Damascus, Syria.

In his sermon, Father Abernathy pointed to the modern-day martyrdom of Christians in Syria who are being slaughtered at the hands of an al-Qaeda-dominated government that was installed by the U.S. and its Western allies following a decades-long regime-change operation.

The most dramatic event in this modern period of martyrdom took place just a week before, on Sunday, June 22, 2025, when at least 25 Christians were killed and 52 injured when an attacker fired an automatic weapon into the Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus during the celebration of mass and then set off a bomb inside the church.

Syrians are calling this the worst attack upon a Christian church in Syria since 1860. This is saying a lot because, during the Western regime-change war against Syria from 2011 to 2025, there were numerous assaults upon Christian churches throughout Syria.

The latter were committed by the very forces which have now come to power in Damascus. I have visited ancient Christian churches in places like Homs and Maaloula, Syria, which were violently attacked by a mix of extremist groups—including the Al-Nusra Front of al-Qaeda which was rebranded as HTS and now rules Syria—during the war.

It was the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) of Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah, which had successfully defended these churches from destruction. But, of course, with the overthrow of Assad, there is virtually no protection for these churches.

The Cradle explained that the June 22 bombing at Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus “shattered the fragile sense of protection Syria’s Christians once clung to. The attack is emblematic of the increasingly sectarian rule imposed by Syria’s new leadership—rooted in al-Qaeda ideology and headed by Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani.”

The Cradle continued, “[o]nce dispatched by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to establish the Nusra Front, Sharaa now governs Damascus through the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) apparatus, whose rise was midwifed by a decade of Western regime-change operations. Under this rebranded Salafist extremist authority, the Christian minority—already decimated by war and displacement—faces a renewed wave of targeted violence and official indifference.”

 A Massacre Foretold

While shocking, this type of anti-Christian violence should not be surprising given the very explicit goals of the al-Qaeda forces now ruling Syria.  As far back as 2012, the U.S.’s own Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) stated it clearly: The Western allies in Syria were backing al-Qaeda to overthrow Assad, and that the goal of al-Qaeda was to establish a radical religious Califate in Syria. And this is exactly what the rebranded al-Qaeda government has done.

Thus, as the non-profit group Global Christian Relief—an organization founded to protect persecuted Christians around the world—has reported:

“In March 2025, interim president and militant Islamist Ahmed al-Sharaa signed a constitutional declaration placing Syria under Islamic rule for five years. Tragically, religious minorities, including persecuted Christians, have been targeted or affected by violence in Syria from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamic militant faction that al-Sharaa once commanded.

Syria had long been under the reign of Bashar al-Assad. Although he committed many human rights violations during his time in power, Syrian Christians and other persecuted religious minorities in Syria found relative stability and predictability under his authoritarian rule. When HTS conquered Assad’s forces and took control of major Syrian cities in December 2024, Christians and other minorities were fearful of the potential changes under the new regime. HTS promised they would not enact radical religious policies, but as time passed, persecution against Christians and other minorities intensified. Militants have attacked churches, desecrated cemeteries, forced Christian women to adhere to Islamic dress codes and confiscated Christians’ homes.”

When I visited Syria in January 2025, the new al-Qaeda government had yet to fully show its hand. While there were acts of persecution against religious minorities, they were limited in number and scope, allowing the new government some plausible deniability for what was happening. Accordingly, many Syrians, while concerned, were taking a wait-and-see attitude about the new regime, which was careful to go slowly with its extremist plans to curry favor with foreign governments.

But once most of the world had accepted the new regime and promised aid and an end to sanctions, and once the Western press corps had left town after their obligatory photo-op with the Sednaya Prison, the new government decided it could fully reveal its hand and begin its terror in earnest without international reprisals.

The Vatican News said it well, when it explained back in March of this year that “[k]illings, kidnappings, theft, harassments, and murders have marked the last few weeks in Syria. The Bashar al-Assad regime fell at the beginning of December and three months later unrest has once again erupted.”

At that time, the Vatican estimated that 4,700 people had already been killed since the fall of Assad and that any doubts about the nature of the new government had now been put to rest.  As the Vatican representative in Syria was quoted as saying, “the few certainties that existed [under Assad] are now gone.”

I personally know a number of Syrians, first hopeful and even excited about the fall of Assad, who are now realizing that the new regime is much worse. In Syria, it is now the time of much grinding and gnashing of teeth.

Source: CovertAction Magazine

Terrorist attack on the Church of Saint Elias in Damascus (Christian Media Center, 06.27.2025)

Pope Leo XIV mourns the suicide attack at St. Elias Church in Damascus (News on Demand, 06.25.2025)