CWN - The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has expressed gratitude for recent developments in Syria, in which ISIS and jihadist rebels have suffered setbacks.

Looking back on 2016, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow said that “the greatest problems that our country and the whole world faced started settling thanks to God’s grace,” according to the Interfax news agency.

“I mean the very dangerous political situation in the Middle East, in Syria,” he explained. “There have been certain changes that saved this crisis and the whole human race from perhaps a very dangerous political development.”

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