The monastery of Deir Mar Musa emerges unexpectedly to the traveler. Perched in the gorge as if it were one of those imposing fortresses from Game of Thrones. Father Paolo Dall'Oglio discovered it like this in 1982, lost in the desert that stretches east of the city of Homs, and abandoned by its former inhabitants.
Access to the impressive building is done on foot, overcoming the nearly 300 steps of a long stone staircase.
Yihad Yusef visited the convent for the first time in 1996, attracted by the legend that had been generated around the Italian priest who intended to create a meeting space between Christians and Muslims there.
"I came with a group of friends and here I felt the call of God, the need to join the monastic life," he explains sitting on the wide esplanade that serves as the main center of activities of the building.
The monastery's superior enters the chapel restored by Paolo and which still retains many of the frescoes painted centuries ago. A Christian temple devoid of benches, where the faithful sit on a carpet emulating the style of mosques, and the Bible is placed on the usual trestles used to read the Quran in places of that faith.
The walls are decorated with writings in Arabic, Greek, and the ancient Aramaic dialect, with phrases that read "God is love" or "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful," an expression systematically used by Muslims when starting a conversation.
"Paolo always wanted this place to be an example of coexistence, even in the way of praying. That's why he chose the Byzantine rite, it was the one that seemed closest to Sufism (Muslim)," explains the successor of the well-known cleric, who disappeared in the city of Raqqa in 2013, after meeting with members of the Islamic State, to whom his kidnapping was always attributed.
A member of the Jesuit order since 1975, Paolo had settled in caves near Deir Mar Musa in 1982. Two years later, he began the restoration of the building - dating back to the fifth or sixth century - which had been looted and partially ruined. In 1991, he began to receive pilgrims and organize interreligious meetings.
Connection between the two religions
"Paolo wanted Deir Mar Musa to be a bridge of connection between the two religions. He did not want to convert Muslims but to coexist with them, to seek common ground. That's why he studied 'Sharia' (Islamic law) in Damascus and became an expert in that religion," points out Yusef.
His openness towards Muslims quickly gained him a large number of followers but also antagonists among the more orthodox sectors of the Christian clergy, who never understood his attitude.
This "religious oasis" - as his followers define it - received up to 30,000 people in 2010, just before the uprising against Bashar Assad began, which halted the experiment.
Despite being a foreigner - born in Italy in 1954 - and a Christian in a predominantly Muslim country, Father Paolo Dall'Oglio was one of the most charismatic figures in the early years of that revolt.
From the outset, Dall'Oglio stood against the dictator, and his figure became a symbolic reference for millions of Syrian Muslims, especially after joining the Temporary Residence program broadcast by Orient TV, which in the early years of the uprising was one of the opposition's favorite channels to Bashar Assad.
In May 2012, the Jesuit sent a letter to the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, calling for a "democratic change" in the country and international intervention to stop the regime's repression.
"The problem is that Paolo also denounced corruption within the church and especially cases of pedophilia. In the end, he was expelled from the country in mid-2012," Yusef recounts.
By that time, Deir Mar Musa's position was particularly complex as a significant sector of the Christian minority had aligned with the regime. In his book The Rage and the Light, Dall'Oglio warned against this position, which he said would cause a significant exodus of members of this confession. "Collectively, Christians have sided with a fascist state, and with it, we will all lose. Syrian Christianity will become something residual," he wrote.
After being included in the regime's blacklist, the Italian religious participated in numerous mediation initiatives to try to mitigate the kidnappings that had already become a plague at that time. Dall'Oglio returned to Syria and in 2012, he met in Qusair, one of the regions of Homs most affected by the conflict, with several Salafist leaders linked to Al Qaeda.
In 2013, the cleric returned once again to the northern part of the country where he was protected and escorted by militants from extremist groups such as Jabhat al Nusra (the Al Qaeda affiliate) and Ahrar al Sham.
His last mediation attempt took him to Raqqa, already the main stronghold of the Islamic State (ISIS), with whom he tried to dialogue to find out the whereabouts of several hostages, including two Syrian bishops.
According to an investigation by the media outlet North Press, Paolo informed one of his friends, Khalaf al-Ghazi, that he planned to meet with the leadership of the Islamic State in Raqqa on July 29, 2013, visiting the former governor's headquarters in that town, turned into the extremists' headquarters. Ghazi himself told that media that he saw Paolo leaving the building - located in the city center - but before he crossed the street, he was kidnapped by several individuals waiting for him in an SUV.
This is one of the two versions that current residents of Deir Mar Musa handle. "There is the person who said he had seen him enter and leave the Governor's Palace, and there is another version that says he entered and never left," explains Carol Cooke-Eid, another of the nuns who formed the initial core of Deir Dar Musa alongside Dall'Oglio.
The nun recalls that despite Dall'Oglio's impetuous character, the cleric did not hide his unease in the days leading up to that last trip. "He told me that he was asking God what he really wanted from him. There were several friends who had advised him not to go, but in the end, he told me that he had understood that he had to go to Raqqa even if it meant his 'passion' (death)," she adds.
"It is evident that I would like to die to be able to confirm this position of solidarity and intersection," Paolo Dall'Oglio wrote when referring to his effort to promote the coexistence of Christians and Muslims.
The Syrian Human Rights League reported in June 2014 that a deserter from ISIS had witnessed the execution of the religious leader shortly after his abduction in July of the previous year by two Saudi radicals, members of the same faction.