Church in Syria suffers ‘bleeding wound’ of emigration

Rome Newsroom, Mar 7, 2021 / 11:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis met Sunday with a father who lost his wife and two children in a shipwreck as Syrian war refugees.

Abdullah Kurdi was one of the thousands of people in the crowd at the pope’s stadium Mass in Erbil, Iraq on March 7.

The haunting photo of his son, Alan Kurdi, made headlines around the world in 2015. The photo showed the three-year-old’s tiny body laying face down on a Turkish beach after he drowned trying to cross the Aegean Sea.

Kurdi was one of only four people to survive after a dinghy carrying 16 refugees making the perilous journey from Turkey to the Greek Island of Kos capsized. His other son Ghalib and his wife, Rehanna, also died in the shipwreck.

During their encounter after the Mass in Erbil, Pope Francis told the father that the Lord participated in his suffering, according to a statement from the Holy See Press Office.

“The pope spent a long time with him and with the help of the interpreter he was able to listen to his father’s pain for the loss of his family and to express his profound participation and that of the Lord in the suffering of man,” it said.

A year on from Alan Kurdi, we continue to ignore future refugee crises https://t.co/Jegv1nPoKX pic.twitter.com/Ln1UXg5Tyz

— Brigitte Colman (@lakolman) September 1, 2016

Kurdi, a Syrian of Kurdish ethnicity, now lives in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region.

The Vatican said that the father thanked the pope for his words of closeness to his tragedy and to that of many migrants who risked their lives to leave their country.

Pope Francis is known for speaking out on behalf of the suffering of refugees. The week of the death of Kurdi’s family, the pope made an appeal to parishes and religious communities to welcome refugees in his Angelus address on Sept. 6, 2015.

“Faced with the tragedy of tens of thousands of refugees fleeing death from war and hunger … the Gospel calls us, asks us to be close to the smallest and most abandoned,” Pope Francis said.

The pope also gave a statue depicting Kurdi’s young son to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters during a visit in 2017.

Kurdi set up a foundation with his sister Tima, the Alan and Ghalib Kurdi Foundation, which raises money in support of refugee children.

In past years, the two siblings spent the anniversary of the shipwreck distributing clothes and supplies to children living in refugee camps.

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Aleppo, Syria, Feb 24, 2017 / 12:20 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Nearly three months after the Syrian Army liberated the city of Aleppo from ISIS control, the local population is facing harsh living conditions in a city left in ruins after nearly six years of fighting.

In an interview with the French aid organization L´Oeuvre D´Orient, Father Ziad Hilal who carries out his pastoral ministry in Aleppo, said that the cost of living in Syria has gotten more expensive.

“Previously, the dollar used to be worth 50 Syrian pounds, today it is equivalent to more than 520 Syrian pounds. Ten times more! The people of Aleppo lack money to live on, few people have a job.”

“They need food, fuel, they have to pay tuition for the children, university students, for milk for the children. They have to pay for electricity generators for each family,” Fr. Hilal said.

“Several thousand people are there in the Aleppo region. They are often without shelter, or housed in old factories. They need everything. Others are close to Idleb (southwest of Aleppo) on the border with Turkey, in Damascus, in Lebanon. Others have taken refuge in Europe. There are also some who have remained in Aleppo by going over to the west side,” Fr. Hilal said.

The Jesuit priest explained that after the evacuation of the rebels from the eastern part of the city, “the situation has gotten a little better, but a lot of rebels still remain in the surrounding villages. There are exchanges of gunfire and shelling between Aleppo and the outskirts.”

“East Aleppo is almost destroyed. There is a military presence but the people can’t return there,” he said.

“Despite that, people are going out on the streets, they can go shopping, the children are calmer. On the other hand, neither electricity nor water have been restored to the city. After the fighting, we had ten days with the water supply cut off which was very trying for everyone. That’s why people aren’t coming back right now, even if some of them want to. Even more so because it’s been a rough winter this year, we’ve had two snowfalls,” Fr. Hilal said.

“The Church must now come alongside the refugees, the displaced, those marginalized. The people of Aleppo come not just to pray but also to get help.”

He stressed that this situation “is not easy work for the priests, the men and women religious, but we’re taking this on.”

For example, the six Catholic churches in Aleppo work together to run an initiative called “the milk place.”

Each month they distribute milk to about 2600 children in Aleppo. The churches also distribute food baskets, hygiene supplies, and pay for tuition and housing for families.

Fr. Hilal said that the reconstruction of Aleppo is premature “as long as there is no peace in the country.” However, he said that they are studying with a number of organizations the possibility of rebuilding some churches and destroyed houses.

“The Apostolic Nuncio in Syria, Cardinal Mario Zenari and Mgr. Dal Toso of Cor Unum, came three weeks ago to evaluate the situation.”

“On the other hand, we can’t expect electricity to be restored here for at least a year because the network was completely destroyed by the fighting. It would take millions and millions of euros to rebuild it,” he said. “Who’s going to pay for that? You have to invest in the city. You have to have hope.”

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Christian refugees iving in an abandoned mall in Lebanon. / Screenshot from a video by A Demand for Action.

Rome Newsroom, Jul 9, 2021 / 14:00 pm (CNA).
In an abandoned mall on the outskirts of Beirut, an image of St. Thérèse of Lisieux hangs in… […]