Peace and love to the hearts of people

Obama’s and John McCain’s friends in Syria – the so-called “Syrian rebels” continue to bring death and destruction upon Christians and Christian churches in Syria. They’re little else than bloodthirsty killers seeking to impose Islamic law on the Syrian people. Other religious groups, like Kurds and Shia Muslims, have also been targeted.

Now, a colossal 40-foot bronze statue of Jesus Christ cast in Armenia rises on mountain top of a Syrian mountain, apparently under cover of a truce among three factions in the country’s civil war, and has appeared between front lines in the war-ravaged Syria “to save the world.”

Jesus stands, arms outstretched, on the Cherubim mountain, overlooking a route pilgrims took from Constantinople to Jerusalem in ancient times. The statue is 12.3 meters (40 feet) tall and stands on a base that brings its height to 32 meters (105 feet), organizers of the project estimate.

Soaring higher than Rio’s famous Christ the Redeemer, the statue stands 39 meters tall, one meter shorter than its Brazilian counterpart, in the mountaintop, Byzantine-era Cherubim Monastery, lording it over the city of Saidnaya, 27 kilometers north of Damascus.

From its vantage point above the sea, the statue overlooks an historic pilgrimage route from Istanbul to Jerusalem. The statue, created by Armenian sculptor Artush Papoian, made it to Syria and was installed without incident on October 14, when Orthodox Christians celebrate a commemoration of the Virgin Mary, whose icon is a chief draw for the monastery.

Al-Ghadban said that the main armed groups in the area – Syrian government forces, rebels and the local militias of Sednaya, the Christian town near the statue site – halted fire while organizers set up the statue, without providing further details.

Rebels and government forces occasionally agree to cease-fires to allow the movement of goods. They typically do not admit to having truces because that would tacitly acknowledge their enemies.

The backers’ success in overcoming the obstacles shows the complexity of civil war, where sometimes despite the atrocities the warring parties can reach short-term truces.

It took three days to raise the statue. Photos provided by organizers show it being hauled in two pieces by farm tractors, then lifted into place by a crane. Smaller statues of Adam and Eve stand nearby.

But the statue was not born of recent events in Syria. The project took 8 years and was set back by the civil war that followed the March 2011 uprising against President Bashar Assad.

While Syria’s ethnic Armenian population has been fleeing the country in droves – including to Armenia itself, which has built a “New Aleppo” to accommodate the arrivals – the project has been in the works since 2005, Russia’s Komsomol’skaya Pravda reports.

Backed by the Russian government, along with the Russian Orthodox Church, the project, billed “I have come to save the world,” was supposedly the brainchild of one Yuri Gavrilov, a 49-year-old Moscow native who runs an organization in London called the St. Paul and St. George Foundation.

Russians have been a driving force behind the project — not surprising given that the Kremlin is embattled Assad’s chief ally, and the Orthodox churches in Russia and Syria have close ties. Al-Ghadban, who spoke to The Associated Press from Moscow, is Syrian-Russian and lives in both countries.

Al-Ghadban said he began the project in 2005, hoping the statue would be an inspiration for Syria’s Christians. He said he was inspired by Rio de Janeiro’s towering Christ the Redeemer statue.

“We hope that this sculptural composition brings peace and love to the hearts of people, and that our work will help restore peace and calm in this long-suffering region,” the Foundation’s director, Samir el-Gadban, told Komsomol’skaya Pravda.

Christians and other minorities are all targets in the conflict, and the statue’s safety is by no means guaranteed. It stands among villages where some fighters, linked to al-Qaida, have little sympathy for Christians.

So why put up a giant statue of Christ in the midst of such setbacks and so much danger? Because “Jesus would have done it,” organizer Samir al-Ghadban quoted a Christian church leader as telling him.

In midst of Syrian war, giant Jesus statue arises

Amid Syria’s civil war, a 40-foot statue of Jesus rises on mountain top between front lines