The monastery and tomb of the old saint had seen numerous desert raiders in the past 16 centuries. When Muslim conquerors first appeared in the seventh century, Mar Elian ("Mar" means saint in Syriac), near the Syrian desert town of al-Qaryatayn, was at least two centuries old. Soldiers sent by Muhammad, by the "Righteously Guided Caliphs," by the Umayyads and Abbasids, would have passed this shrine and caravan watering hole numerous times and moved on, leaving the site untouched.

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But in early August 10 years ago, these Muslim raiders were different. On Aug. 6, 2015, the Islamic State took the nearby town of al-Qaryatayn and seized several hundred Christians hostage while others fled. Earlier, they had kidnapped the local priest at Mar Elian, Father Jacques Mourad, whose whereabouts were unknown and who was "feared dead."

On Aug. 21, the Islamic State released propaganda photos and video showing their fighters destroying the Syriac Catholic Monastery of Mar Elian and the saint's tomb itself using bulldozers and dynamite. Some of the images released by the group showed scattered bones on the ground among the shattered parts of an ancient Roman marble sarcophagus decorated with carved crosses.

Many Western news accounts reported this outrage at the time, although many did not quite understand who Mar Elian was and the history of the site. The Homs governorate of Syria boasts not one but two St. Elians ("Elian" not Elias or Elijah). The city of Homs proper hosts the tomb of Mar Elian (St. Julian of Emesa), a third-century Christian doctor -- one of the "Holy Unmercenaries" -- who was martyred in A.D. 284 under Emperor Numerian.

Eighty kilometers (50 miles) away, the Mar Elian whose shrine was desecrated at al-Qaryatayn was Elian the Hermit or Elian the Elder, a Syriac saint, ascetic and miracle worker originally from the city of Edessa (today Urfa in Turkey) who died in A.D. 367 and was a teacher of St. Ephrem the Syrian, one of the doctors of the Church. St. Ephrem, the "Harp of the Holy Spirit," wrote a series of poems about his sainted teacher Elian.

This disaster -- a priest and hundreds of faithful kidnapped and in the hands of terrorists, an ancient monastery and shrine destroyed -- exactly 10 years ago this month was only one small part of the horrors of the war in Syria and the suffering of the Syrian people, Christian and Muslim, since 2011.

ISIS rule over the zone lasted less than a year, a Russian-back Syrian Army offensive recovering it in April 2016. Almost all of the kidnapped Christians of Al-Qaryatayn, after suffering terrifying humiliation and repeated threats at the hands of their Islamic State captors, were eventually released. Some of the elderly had died of natural causes and a few were killed in airstrikes.

Amazingly, the bones of Mar Elian were recovered and some initial work was done towards restoring the monastery and shrine, a site that once attracted both local Muslims as well as Christians. Father Mourad was able to escape captivity with the help of local Muslims after being held for five months. Since 2023, he has served as the Syriac Catholic archbishop of Homs.

In an interview with EWTN News' ACI MENA, Archbishop Mourad reflected on the 10th anniversary of the terrible events of August 2015. It was on Aug. 12 of that year that he was transferred by his captors to the ISIS capital of Raqqa and met his kidnapped parishioners. Later that month, they were all allowed to return to al-Qaryatayn, closely watched and monitored by ISIS, and the additional fear now became being bombed by the Syrian or Russian air forces.

"On the third or fourth day after our return, we decided to hold a secret Mass in an apartment in the town center. It was my first Mass after four months, and it was an extraordinary feeling for me and the believers, as tears of joy mingled with fear of being discovered," the archbishop recalled. "Despite the fear, we all felt a sense of courage, and I attribute that to the Virgin Mary, as the Rosary prayer had not left my side since the moment of my abduction until the day of my escape, giving me an inner peace that surpassed the fear."

After the expulsion of ISIS in 2016, the slow work of recovery began.

The bones of Mar Elian and local monks were recovered and sent to Homs for safekeeping until they could be returned.

"In 2021, we decided to restore the monastery, to return it to the way it was," the archbishop explained. Not only was there the destruction wrought by ISIS, but thieves had, under cover of military security, cut down hundreds of olive and other trees that had been planted a decade before. "We started cultivating the land again; and then in 2022, we started restoring the monastery and the shrine of the saint. On his feast day, in a celebration attended by the metropolitan archbishops of Damascus and Homs, from both the Orthodox and Catholics, we returned the bones to the shrine, on Sept. 9, 2022, the Muslims joining us in the procession through al-Qaryatayn, a very moving scene."

Archbishop Mourad added that "only about 25 Christians remain" but that "we hope if things stabilize in the country that we can completely restore it so that it can return to be a pilgrimage site and a place for spiritual retreats."

In Syria, much has been lost and much is under threat. Both congregations and holy sites are at risk. But just as Mar Elian has been recovered and the slow work of restoration begun, Archbishop Mourad recently said that, despite tremendous difficulties and dangers, "Jesus wants his Church to remain in Syria. And this idea of emptying Syria of Christians is certainly not God's will."

Alberto M. Fernandez is a former U.S. diplomat and a contributor at EWTN News.