The head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church
Relations expressed hope that President Donald Trump would change
American foreign policy in the Middle East, which he linked to the
persecution of the region’s Christians.“If Trump now says that America should defend its borders, not other [countries’ borders], it’s a totally conscious and well thought-out message,” Metropolitan Hilarion said in a television interview.
“If America stops introducing its policies in the Middle East like a bull in a china shop, then I hope that the genocide of Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities, which has continued in the Middle East for over ten years, will end,” he added, according to the Interfax news agency.