Letter to His Holiness Moran Mor Ignatios Zakka II Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch 3/11/2006 Protocol #/ΕΞ/Γ/4645/2006 Athens, 3rd November 2006 His Holiness Moran Mor Ignatios Zakka II Syrian Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch Bab Touma, P.O. Box 22260 DAMASCUS Syria Your Holiness, On receiving the sad news of the sacrilegious murder of Fr. Paulos in Mosul on October 9, by a fierce and inhuman terrorist organization, we feel proper to express our sincere feelings of sympathy to the Christian Community of Mosul and to the pious members of the Syrian Orthodox Church, in general, for unjustifiably receiving the rage of an extreme Muslim group as an action of retaliation to Christianity for an apostrophe of Pope Benedict XVI’s lecture to an educated audience in Regensburg. Tolerance has been the golden rule for the Syrian Orthodox Church through centuries of inhabiting among a Muslim environment. If only the Muslim world had been that tolerant towards Christianity! We tread to the first years of the 21st century and it is typical of the Muslim world that despite our co-existence in time they keep a different calendar, that of Hegira. Our and their cultures have been so afar! The law of love against the law of the sword! But time will come when the “the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them” (Isaiah 11:6). We yearn for the times of the Lord and remain, In His holy name, Archbishop of Athens and Primate of the Orthodox Church of Greece Κοιν.: Παν/τον Ἀρχιμανδρίτην Ἰωάννην Γασσάλυ ἐφημέριον Ὀρθοδόξων Συρίων ἐν Ἑλλάδι διὰ τηλεομοιοτύπου: 210 77 15 418