In the midst of the fighting and the killing of innocents, “a giant bronze statue of Jesus has gone up on a Syrian mountain, apparently under cover of a truce among three factions in the country’s civil war,” reports the Washington Post.
The 12.3-meter (40 feet) bronze statue, the result of an eight-year effort by Samir al-Ghadban, run by the London-based St. Paul and St. George Foundation mostly with private donations and supported by the British and the Russians, went up without incident on Oct. 14 on the Cherubim mountain, “overlooking a route pilgrims took from Constantinople to Jerusalem in ancient times.”
The base the statue stands on brings its height to 32 meters (105 feet), organizers of the project estimate.
The Washington Post:
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.
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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.
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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.
He commissioned an Armenian sculptor, but progress was slow. A series of his backers died, including Valentin Varennikov, a general who participated in the 1991 coup attempt against then President Mikhail Gorbachev. He later sought President Vladimir Putin’s backing for the statue project.
Varennikov died in 2009.
The Post piece describes the difficulties encountered in completing this wonderful project and the risks still involved.
There are and will be questions about the appropriateness of placing a Christian statue in the “heart of a Muslim majority state,” and about the reluctance in some western quarters about having Muslim symbols, mosques, etc. in our midst (See the first comment following the Post piece).
In my opinion and regardless of religious “ramifications,” it is heartwarming to read this piece on a Sunday morning instead of the usual war, terrorism and massacres related news.
Read more here
Image: Statue of Jesus on Brazil’s Corcovado Mountain courtesy www.shutterstock.com. The Cherubim mountain statue is said to have been inspired by Brazil’s towering Christ the Redeemer statue.
