Grave of Cameroonian bishop who died under suspicious circumstances desecrated

Mosul, Iraq, Jan 10, 2018 / 11:34 am (ACI Prensa).- When Iraqi residents fled their homes during the Islamic State invasion, they left behind their houses, neighbors, and day-to-day lives.

For the children who fled, leaving their home behind also meant an interruption in their education – in some cases for months or years.

While some refugee camps offer classes for children, challenges abound and students often fall behind.

Now, a group of Dominican sisters in one Iraqi town is working to help educate displaced children as their families return to their homes and work to rebuild their lives.

With the support of Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need in Spain, the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Sienna were able to restore their convent, which had been destroyed by the Islamic State in Iraq. Today, they offer classes to hundreds of children who had been displaced by the war.

“We try to help the children, giving them peace: in our convent we offer them a safe place,” Sister Ilham told ACN in late December. Despite the expulsion of ISIS, security in the area remains unstable.  

In May 2017, ACN funded the restoration of Our Lady of the Rosary Convent with a grant of $54,000. Located in Teleskuf, north of the plain of Nineveh, the convent is just over 20 miles outside of Mosul.

The sisters worked 12-hour days to prepare the convent to welcome the children, Sister Ilham said.

They provide daycare for children between three and five years old. In the mornings, they teach about 150 children between the ages of six and 12. In the evenings, they teach students 12 years of age and older.

Sister Ilham, 57, was working for a church in Mosul when the rapid advance of the Islamic State forced her and her community to flee. However, after the fall of the terrorist group, she returned to the area and today is helping those displaced from Teleskuf.

“None of us wanted to leave where we come from, but as the attacks continued, we had to flee to save our lives,” she said.

“In 2016 some 6,000 people had to leave Telskuf. When I returned to this area, all the houses were abandoned and many of them destroyed,” she continued. “In Teleskuf all that is left of many of buildings are the ruins. The school and the children’s home are destroyed, the doors of the convent were forced open and the sisters’ home was sacked.”

In addition to teaching at the convent, the sisters visit the members of the Christian community in their homes, teach catechism to the children, and prepare them for their First Communion.

Once the local school is rebuilt, the children will no longer need to attend the convent classes. In the meantime, the sisters hope they can help the children from falling too far behind in their studies.

“Before the Islamic State invasion, there were five sisters in the convent, while now there are only two of us. Fortunately, we are will soon receive reinforcements,” Sister Ilham said.

In addition to helping fund the convent reconstruction, Aid to the Church in Need is currently helping rebuild 13,000 houses and more than 300 church properties destroyed by the Islamic State in Iraq.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Juba, South Sudan, Apr 7, 2019 / 04:30 pm (CNA).- After a fire killed three young girls at a Catholic girls boarding school in South Sudan last month, the local Catholic diocese and state government have announced that they plan to repay the two famili… […]

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dec 8, 2017 / 03:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Every day, thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are forced to flee their homes.

In recent months, violent clashes have escalated, creating a massive refugee crisis that has gone largely unnoticed in much of the Western world.

“Political and ethnic tensions have forced millions of Congolese to leave their homes in the past year alone. The vast majority of these people are internally displaced within the country, while a minority have become refugees upon fleeing to neighboring countries,” said Amakala Constantin Sodio, the Kinshasa-based Catholic Relief Services country representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Congo-Brazzaville.

Sodio told CNA Dec. 8 there has been a “rapid escalation” of conflicts in the regions of Kasaï, Tanganyika and South Kivu in 2016 and 2017. This has put 4.3 million people into a crisis situation, facing emergency levels of food insecurity.

More than 1.7 million people have fled their homes this year alone. The U.N. has classed the country refugee situation as Level 3, equal to Syria, Iraq and Yemen in its humanitarian need.

The situation is far from stabilizing. At least 14 U.N. peacekeepers and five Congolese soldiers were killed in an attack in North Kivu province Thursday night, believed to have been carried out by a rebel group.
 
“It’s a mega-crisis. The scale of people fleeing violence is off the charts, outpacing Syria, Yemen and Iraq,” said Ulrika Blom, the country director for the Norwegian Refugee Council, according to the BBC.

“If we fail to step up now, mass hunger will spread and people will die. We are in a race against time,” Blom added.

New armed conflicts, an intensification of current conflicts, and the delay in elections has helped drive the crisis, according to a report from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

Lambert Mende, the country’s minister of information, disputed the report and said that displaced people number less than 1 million. He said displaced people were in fact returning from nearby countries, the BBC reports.

About 5,500 Congolese people flee their homes each day, the report said. There are 4 million displaced people in the country and over 7 million who lack adequate food.

The average life expectancy in the country is under 60 years old, and more than 75 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per day.

Amid the current crisis, Catholic Relief Services aims to provide a rapid response to aid at-risk communities.

“With an initial focus on emergency response, CRS also carries out development programs focused on health, hygiene, nutrition, and agricultural interventions,” Sodio said. “CRS’ local partnerships and staff presence across the country ensures our ability to rapidly start up projects and reach people in remote areas.”

The Catholic relief agency has 182 staffers in the country and aided 1.3 million people with $27 million in resources programming in 2017, in collaboration with its partners.

The humanitarian emergency is complex and there are no simple solutions, Sodio said.

“Improvements to the quality of life of people displaced will happen slowly as countrywide efforts are made to strengthen local systems, so they may safely return home to rebuild dignified lives,” he said.

CRS has been in the country since 1961 and has maintained a continuous presence since 1993.

Sodio cited the words of Barbara Forbes, a DRC-based International Development Fellow at Catholic Relief Services, who noted that many Congolese refugees are expected to be among the 45,000 people resettled in the U.S. in 2018.

“Personally meeting refugees in the community is a great way for Americans to maintain perspective on this issue,” Forbes said.

“Americans can help these refugees thrive by offering them jobs and volunteering to drive them to medical appointments or explain their household bills,” she added. One refugee in the U.S. had told her of her dreams to go to college on a basketball scholarship and study law.

Such personal connections with refugees make clear the importance of advocacy for increased acceptance of refugee resettlement in the U.S., according to Forbes.
 

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