Damascus, Syria, Jul 14, 2012 / 05:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Franciscans in Syria are calling upon foreign powers to stop sending arms to the country after reports that over 200 civilians have been massacred in the village of Tremseh, potentially the bloodiest single incident of the Syrian conflict so far.

“It is a tragedy, the news is confusing, truth is the first victim,” Franciscan Father Romualdo Fernandez, Director of the Ecumenical Centre of Tabbaleh, said on July 13 in Damascus.

“If foreign powers continue to arm and finance the warring parties, the war will continue and victims will increase. This is not the way of peace: the road to peace is through dialogue,” he told the Vatican’s Fides news agency.

The armed revolt against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011 and has since claimed over 10,000 lives, according to the latest U.N. estimates.

Reports as to what happened in the village of Tremseh are conflicting. United Nations observers have confirmed that the village in the western Hama province was subject to heavy fighting, including helicopters, tanks and heavy artillery on Thursday, July 12.

The Supreme Court has ruled that those fines or penalties for non-compliance with the Affordable Care Act are a tax. Thus, the Federal Government will soon tax the Catholic Church for abiding by its deeply held religious convictions in its ministry to people in need. These taxes could have the practical result of closing many of the Church’s outreaches, ministries and institutions of care and compassion.  This not only injures the Church and violates the Constitution, it injures American society and is an offense against the common good.

Baltimore, Md., Jul 8, 2012 / 04:56 pm (CNA).- It was the end of March when the violence in Syria became unbearable for Salwa, a young mother who lived in the besieged city of Homs with her husband and four children.

After more than a year of almost daily bloodshed, she and her family left behind everything they owned, and fled Syria with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing.

They crossed the border into neighboring Jordan, where they finally found safety in the town of Mafraq. There, with the help of Catholic Relief Services, Caritas Jordan is helping families like Salwa’s get through the crisis.

Salwa told Caritas Jordan volunteers that she’s grateful her family is safe, but that her children are still fearful. “Whenever they hear fireworks—often part of local wedding celebrations in Jordan—they fear that the violence has followed them from their home in Syria to Jordan.”
 
CRS helps thousands of Syrians affected by crisis

The violence that erupted in Syria in March 2011 has spiraled into a tumultuous, terrifying conflict and has led to paralyzing fear for innocent civilians—many of them women, children and the elderly. It’s unclear exactly how many Syrians have been displaced by the fighting, but the United Nations estimated at the end of May that at least 500,000 Syrians had fled their homes for the safety of neighboring countries.