It started as an uprising, but only the dimmest bulbs in the foreign policy sphere could see it as anything but a major proxy war for all the major players in the region. In a best case scenario for people in the region, after Assad falls the major players come to a new status quo and back off of confrontation.

The more likely scenario, however, sees the Syrian civil war spread to a new Lebanese civil war and a full-fledged Iraqi civil war, with the possibility of a general war in the region if Iran gets too directly involved in the latter. The intra-regional split is Sunni-Shia, and has been a long time coming. The inter-regional split is the US/West backing the Saudis, Qataris and Turks (Sunni power brokers as Egypt is in turmoil), and Russia/China backing Iran and Hizbullah (the Shia power brokers now that Assad has no ability to project power even within much of Syria, much less beyond its borders). The inter-regional tensions are unlikely to lead to World War III, but the intra-regional tensions are very likely to see continuing "wars of religion" that make the European conflicts of the same name seem tame, because there is no unified will at the great power level to see a particular result imposed on the region from without.

So, sure, let's play the Pope game.