A crash course in Miracles 101
By Mary Rezac
Denver, Colo., May 8, 2016 / 03:32 pm (CNA) - What do a grilled cheese sandwich and the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe have in common?
Both bore what appeared to be images of Mary. One was determined to be authentically miraculous, the other was not. Not to spoil any secrets, but it’s not Our Lady of the Grilled Cheese that converted Mexico and continues to draw millions of people on pilgrimage every year.
But have you ever wondered just how the Church determines the bogus from the divinely appointed?
In his new book, “Exploring the Miraculous,” Michael O’Neill gives readers a crash course of sorts in “Miracles 101” - including common questions about the importance of miracles, an explanation of the approval process, and descriptions of the various types of miracles found within the Catholic Church.
“This is a very rare book in that it tries to cover the entire spectrum of miracles within the Catholic Church,” O’Neill told CNA.
Catholics by definition are people who have to believe in at least two miracles, O’Neill said - that of Christ’s incarnation and his resurrection, two pillars on which the Catholic faith rests.
For modern-day miracles, belief is never required of the faithful. The highest recognition that the Church gives to an alleged miracle is that it is “worthy of belief.” Investigations of reported miraculous events – which include extensive fact-finding, psychological examination and theological evaluation – may result in a rejection if the event is determined to be fraudulent or lacking in super natural character.
Or the Church may take a middle road, declaring that there is nothing contrary to the faith in a supposed apparition, without making a determination on whether a supernatural character is present.
But while official investigations can take years, the mere report of a miracle can bring Catholics from long distances, hoping to see some glimpse of the divine reaching into the human.
And it’s not just the faithful who find miracles fascinating.
“It's important for atheists and skeptics, those people who don’t believe, they’ve got to have an explanation for the inexplicable,” he said. “There’s something for everyone.”
The universal nature of the experience of the miraculous is also what draws people from all belief spectrums to these stories, O’Neill added.
“We all pray for miracles of one sort or another. They can be these really sort of small things like praying for an impossible comeback in a football game, or it can be a lost wallet or wedding ring,” he said.
“But they can also be these really big things, such as our loved ones, they fall away from the faith and we want them to return, or somebody from our friends or our family is very sick and we desperately implore God’s help for them. It’s something that everybody experiences.”
O’Neills own fascination with miracles started in college, when for an archeology assignment he studied the miraculous tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a Marian apparition to which he’d inherited his mother’s devotion. He had heard stories about miracles associated with the image, both from within his own family and from the larger Church, and he wondered how much truth there was to the tales.
He also started learning about the larger tradition of miracles within the Church, and was struck by how the Church has carefully investigated thousands of claims over the years, only to select certain ones that it eventually deems as of divine origin.
“I thought that was fascinating that the Church would stick its neck out and say these things are worthy of belief,” he said.
Although he continued his engineering studies throughout college, a piece of advice at graduation from Condoleezza Rice, who was serving as vice provost at Stanford University at the time, stayed with him.
“She asked what we were going to do after graduation, and her advice was to become an expert in something,” he said.
“And I thought about what would be a great thing to study? My mind went back to all those hours I’d spent in the library and my promise to return to it someday and I said you know what? I want to be the expert on miracles.”
For a while he kept his studies private - he didn’t want to be seen as the guy who was obsessed with weird things like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. But eventually, he realized that many people were interested in miracles and found them helpful for their own faith.
“It’s a way that people feel connected to God, they know that God is a loving father watching out for them, so it’s one of those things - a miracle is a universal touchstone,” he said.
“No matter how strong we think our faith is or want it to be, we always want to know that God is there for us, and miracles are that sort of element that bridges the gap between our faith and our connection with God.”
In his book, O’Neill provides descriptions and examples of every basic category of miracle within the Catholic Church, including healing miracles from saints in the canonization process, biblical miracles, apparitions, locutions (audible messages from God or a saint), miraculous images, Eucharistic miracles, incorrupt bodies (those that either partially or fully do not decompose after death), and stigmata (the wounds of Christ appearing on some living people).
The most popular kind of miracle, and O’Neill’s personal favorite, are Marian apparitions - when Mary appears in a supernatural and corporeal way to a member of the faithful, most often with a message.
There have been about 2,500 claims of Marian apparitions throughout history, and a major one that many people are currently curious about are the alleged apparitions happening at Medjugorje, about which the Church has yet to make a definitive decision of validity. Curiosity about Marian apparitions was also a large part of what spurred O’Neill to create his website, miraclehunter.com, where he files information about miracles in their respective categories and provides information on their origin story and whether or not they have been approved by the Vatican.
“The Vatican didn’t have a resource where you can find out what’s approved and what’s not, and what messages are good for our faith and what ones we should stay away from, so I tried to create a resource for the faithful for that,” he said. He’s now been running the website for 15 years.
O’Neill also loves Eucharistic miracles, because unlike several other types of miracles, whose validity are largely determined by faithful and reliable witnesses, science can be applied.
“They can check to see if it’s really human blood, and what type of blood, and in some cases you have heart muscle in these hosts that have turned into true flesh,” he said.
One of O’Neill’s favorite Eucharistic miracles occurred in Argentina while Pope Francis was still a bishop there.
It was August of 1996, and a priest in Buenos Aires, Fr. Alejandro Pezet, discovered a host in the back of his church, and so he took it and placed it in some water in the tabernacle to dissolve it. Over the next few days, days he kept an eye on it, and it grew increasingly red. The priest decided to present the case to Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio, who ordered that the host be professionally photographed and eventually examined by a scientist in the U.S., who was not told the origin of the specimen he was testing.
The tests showed the sample to be heart muscle with blood type AB, the same blood type found on the Shroud of Turin.
“The scientist was an atheist and he said, why did you send me this heart muscle, what was the point of this? And they said it was a consecrated host, and actually that atheist scientist converted to Catholicism as a result of that study,” O’Neill said.
O’Neill also notes in his book that when considering miracles, it’s important to not go to extremes.
“The question of the role of miracles in our life of faith is an important one and requires avoiding two extremes: an overemphasis and credulity regarding the supernatural on the one hand and a denial of the possibility of divine intervention and a diminishment of the role of popular devotion on the other,” he wrote. Either way, obedience to the magisterium of the Church and their teachings on particular miracles is key.
Miracles are an important asset for the faith because of their ability to connect people with God, either as first-time believers or as long-time faithful who need a reminder of God’s presence.
“I like to think of miracles as a great way to engage young people, to get them excited about the faith,” he said. “They shouldn’t be the centrality of anybody’s faith, but it’s a way to open the door for people...so I think miracles can play a huge role in evangelization.”
Don't lock up the Holy Spirit
in your heart, Pope Francis says
Vatican City, May 9, 2016 / 11:43 am (CNA/EWTN News) - The Holy Spirit seems to be a “luxury prisoner” in many Christians’ hearts: someone who is welcomed to stay, but not allowed to act or move us forward, the Pope said during his homily at Mass on Monday.
“We keep the Holy Spirit as a ‘luxury prisoner’ in our hearts: we do not allow the Spirit to push us forward, to move us. The Spirit does everything, knows everything, reminds us what Jesus said, can explain all about Jesus,” the Holy Father said May 9 during his Mass at the chapel of Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican.
In the day's reading, when St. Paul speaks with the disciples in Ephesus (Acts 19: 1-8), Pope Francis pointed out that they had “not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”
Likewise, while Christians today have a knowledge of the Holy Spirit as part of the Holy Trinity, they do not know what the Spirit’s role is in the Church.
“The Holy Spirit is the one who moves the Church, the one who works in the Church and in our hearts,” the Roman Pontiff said.
The Third Person of the Trinity is “the protagonist of the Living Church,” he said, while cautioning against simply reducing the Christian life to a code of “morals and ethics.”
The faith, the Pope said, is something more. It “is not just an ethical life: it is an encounter with Jesus Christ.”
The Holy Spirit “frees us from the ‘orphan-like’ condition which the spirit of the world wants to put us in.”
“The Holy Spirit is the one who “moves us to praise God, to pray to the Lord” and who “teaches us to see the Father and call him ‘Father.’”
There is one thing the Holy Spirit “can’t do” the Pope said: “The Holy Spirit cannot make us ‘virtual’ Christians who are not virtuous.” Instead, “The Holy Spirit makes real Christians. The Spirit takes life and prophetically reads the signs of the times pushing us forward.”
Ahead of Pentecost Sunday the Holy Father invited Christians to prepare by opening up our hearts to the Holy Spirit.
“This is what we must do this week: think of the Spirit and talk to him.”
Pope Francis also greeted the Vincentian Sisters of Charity who work in Casa Santa Marta. Today they are celebrating the feast of St. Louise de Marillac who, along with St. Vincent de Paul, founded their order.
Why many women in China
won't celebrate Mother's Day
By Elise Harris
Rome, Italy, May 8, 2016 / 04:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News) - Mothers across the globe are celebrating Mother’s Day today with their husbands and children. But for many women in China, Mother’s Day is a haunting reminder of the cost of their country’s harsh reproductive laws.
While abortion rates in China have in the past been numbered at 13 million per year, according to the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015, the real number is almost double.
According to the report, released April 12, the number of annual abortions in China is actually 10 million higher than previously thought, bringing the total number of annual abortions to a staggering 23 million a year, with no specification on how many of them are forced.
The reason for the increase, according to the report, is that the 13 million covers only the number of abortions in official, government facilities, whereas the additional 10 million were reported by an official Chinese news outlet for non-governmental facilities.
The report states that “the National Health Population and Family Planning Commission reported that 13 million women annually terminated unplanned pregnancies.”
“An official news media outlet also reported at least an additional 10 million chemically induced abortions were performed in nongovernment facilities,” the report read, stating that “Government statistics on the percentage of all abortions that were non-elective was not available.”
Zhang Anni is a classic example of the nightmare that China’s restrictive birth policy forces on countless women, as well as the hope and promise that is lost daily to forced abortions and gendercide in the country.
The second daughter of Chinese dissident and human rights activist Zhang Lin, Anni, 13, was nearly forcibly aborted numerous times when her mother was just six months pregnant.
Her family had been persecuted relentlessly for her father’s writings and activism against the Chinese Communist Party, to the extent that he was jailed numerous times and tortured with cruel punishments, such as jumping on his back, hands and feet, resulting in injuries that put him in a wheelchair.
Since Anni was Zhang Lin’s second child at a time when it was still illegal to have two children under the Communist Party’s strict One-Child Policy, her mother was targeted for forced abortion, with family planning police showing up and pounding on their door daily to drag her out for an abortion.
Anni’s mother was so distressed that she contemplated suicide, but fought against the idea in order to protect her daughter’s life.
In the end, Zhan Lin was able to save Anni from being aborted by convincing the family planning police that she was the first child of his second wife. However, his constant blogging about the brutal pressure being placed on his family also put the government in a bad light, so they decided to back off.
But that wasn’t the end. At 10 years old Anni became the youngest person in China to be detained in prison. She was arrested after school due to her father’s activism and kept overnight without food or a blanket, and was released the next day only after hours of haggling on the part of her father to get her out.
Given the precariousness of the situation and knowing he would likely go back to prison, Zhang Lin wanted to get Anni out of China, and contacted women’s rights activist Reggie Littlejohn for help.
President and founder of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, an organization dedicated to fighting forced abortion and gendercide in China, Littlejohn and her husband agreed to take in both Anni and her older sister Ruli. Four people were jailed for helping them to get out of the country.
Now, after just two and a half years in the United States, Anni has gone from speaking no English to getting straight-A’s and is one of the top students in her class. She began piano lessons shortly after arriving to the U.S., and recently won a competition to play in New York’s prestigious Carnegie Hall.
Littlejohn, who has taken on full parental responsibilities for Ruli and Anni, told CNA May 4 that to her, Anni is “an example.”
“As a second daughter, girls like that are commonly aborted due to gendercide. And also her mother was almost forcibly aborted…her mother was so distressed about this that she actually contemplated suicide, it just tore her apart,” Littlejohn said.
However, she said that when she looks at Anni, who she considers as her own daughter, “I think of how beautiful and how brilliant she is and this is the kind of talent and beauty and light and love and joy that are being lost through forced abortion and sex-selective abortion in China every day.”
While many might believe that these practices have stopped with China’s recent implementation of a two-child policy, which went into effect Jan. 1, Littlejohn says this is far from being true.
“The new Two-Child Policy is nothing to celebrate about. They used to kill every child after one, now they kill every child after two. So the entire infrastructure of coercion is still in place,” she said.
“You still have to have government permission to have two children. It’s two children per couple, so if you’re not in a couple, you can’t have a kid. So single women are still forcibly aborted in China and that accounts for a very large proportion of the abortions,” she added.
The State Department’s report also indicated a system of coercion surrounding reproductive rights in China, reporting that “the country’s birth-limitation policies retained harshly coercive elements in law and practice.”
The report spoke of the “intense pressure” put on families by the police to enforce birth quotas, resulting in “instances of local family-planning officials using physical coercion to meet government goals.”
“Such practices included the mandatory use of birth control and the forced abortion of unauthorized pregnancies,” it read, noting that in cases in which the family already had two children, “one parent was often required to undergo sterilization.”
There are even links between job promotion and success in meeting the birth limitations. Police job promotion, in particular, “provided a powerful structural incentive for officials to employ coercive measures to meet population goals.”
While officially prohibited in China, sex-selective abortions “continued because of traditional preference for male children and the birth-limitation policy,” the report stated.
“Female infanticide, gender-biased abortions, and the abandonment and neglect of baby girls remained problems due to the traditional preference for sons and the birth-limitation policy.”
Littlejohn said she doesn’t expect the number of gendercide abortions to go down even under the two-child policy, because when a family has a daughter for their first child, “it’s routine to abort or abandon” a second daughter so that the family can reserve the place for a boy.
She said she has been discouraged that the amount of international pressure to stop these atrocities from happening in China have dropped after the country’s leaders changed the rules on the one-child policy.
“The Chinese Communist Party propaganda machine announced this change as the abandonment of the One-Child Policy and the western media just picked up on it. So people think that the problem of forced abortion and sex-selective abortion is over,” she said.
However, if the State Department’s 2015 report is any indication, this is a trend that won’t end any time soon.
Littlejohn said that as time goes on, she expects more cases of forced abortions to leak out of China, making it obvious that the problem still exists. However, getting new cases isn’t easy due to the trauma and persecution women face if they decide to speak out.
“If a woman is forcibly aborted…she’s been completely traumatized, she’s lost her child and she has suffered extreme sexual violence, basically. I equate forced abortion with official government rape,” Littlejohn said.
Then if the woman lets news of her forced abortion leak to western media, “she and her family are going to be intensely and heavily persecuted, to add onto all the trauma.”
“For every woman who will step forward and say ‘this happened to me,’ there are a thousand or a million that are going to be silent because they do not want to endure the persecution of themselves and their families on top of the forced abortion and the loss of a child that they’ve already suffered,” she said.
In order to help draw attention to the situation Littlejohn urged people to watch a brief, 4 minute video her organization produced called “Stop Forced Abortion: China’s War Against Women” in order be informed, and encouraged donations to their “Save a Girl Campaign.”
“We’re in one little area of China, but if we had resources we could be saving girls all over China. Every little girl who is vulnerable to sex-selective abortion deserves to be saved.”
Critics reject the 'eugenics mentality'
of calling for abortion in Zika cases
By David Ramos
Lima, Peru, May 6, 2016 / 06:08 am (CNA/EWTN News) - A number of Latin American pro-life leaders have criticized a recent statement by the head of the Organization of American States, who is encouraging abortion access for pregnant women infected with the Zika virus.
The abortion push demonstrates the “eugenics mentality” of the international organization, according to one commentator.
In an April 26 statement the secretary general of the OAS, Luis Almagro, described the Zika outbreak in various Latin American countries as “an opportunity for equal rights” and stated that in cases of infected pregnant women, “the legal interruption of pregnancy would be justifiable.”
This justification, Almagro explained, is based on “the risk to the life of the mother from the perspective of her dignity, the material conditions of her life and existence, but above all, her ability to make autonomous decisions about her life and health and the future of her offspring and the nuclear family.”
The OAS is an organization of all 35 independent states o the Americas which aims to promote democracy, human rights, security, and development.
The first case of the Zika virus in the Americas was recorded in Brazil in May 2015. Since then, the virus has spread across Latin America and into the United States.
The Zika virus is most often transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Infection does not usually cause serious illness, but it is widely agreed that the virus is linked to microcephaly, a disorder in which children are born with abnormally small heads, and often delayed brain development. The infection appears to be passed from a pregnant mother to her unborn child.
Speaking to CNA, Jesús Magaña of the Colombian citizen platform United for Life, said in response to the OAS secretary general's statement that “we're again witnessing the resurgence of a eugenics mentality.”
For Magaña, the OAS wants to take advantage of the Zika epidemic “not with a view to the health of the most defenseless and vulnerable populations, of the poorest women, but rather to destroy the children of the poor, to get rid of poverty through destruction, by aborting the poor.”
And Luis Losada Pescador, director of campaigns for the international pro-life platform CitizenGo, also criticized that the OAS “in its statement talks about 'taking advantage of the opportunity' for what they call 'equal rights.' That is to say, they recognize that it's a matter of an excuse to promote abortion in the region.”
“Where is the right to life recognized in Article IV of the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights? Do the (member) states agree that this international organization can bypass the mandates, to follow an ideological agenda?” he questioned.
Marcos León, vice president of the Pro-Life Generation in Paraguay, called “a complete disgrace” the fact that the OAS secretary general is demonstrating adherence with those promoting “the abortion culture, and even more so, while he heads up an organization whose main objective is to defend people's fundamental rights.”
“It's intolerable that in face of a problem like Zika, whose the real solution is found in prevention policies and eliminating the vector mosquito based on educating the citizenry and raising their awareness, that the voluntary elimination of human beings again be proposed as a 'solution or palliation' of the evils caused by this illness,” he stated.
“You can't talk about the right to kill a human being just because it's temporarily in the mother's womb, who is so defenseless that it can't defend itself and needs us adults,” said Karla Martínez del Rosal de Rodríguez, of the Pro-Life Pastoral Ministry of the Archdiocese of Santiago de Guatemala.
For the Guatemalan pro-life leader, “ you can't talk about equality if your right to life is decided upon in an arbitrary fashion; life is the most fundamental of rights, recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ratified by the Pact of San José [of the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights].”
Julia Regina de Cardenal, of the El Salvador Yes to Life Foundation, pointed out that the real figures disprove that the cases of microcephaly connected to Zika are numerous.
According to the BBC, it is estimated that one percent of women who had Zina during pregnancy will have a child with microcephaly. Brazilian doctors, however, “have told the BBC that as many as 20% of Zika-affected pregnancies will result in a range of other forms of brain damage to the baby in the womb.”
Regina de Cardenal charged that “The pro-abortion lobby is exploiting this health crisis to legalize the abortion industry,” and recalled that “the unborn baby has the right to life, even when it may have an illness or birth defects.”
Sara Larín, president of the VIDA SV movement in El Salvador, said that this “is not the first time the OAS is using fear tactics in order to impose abortion in Latin American countries.”
“They did it with the overpopulation issue, and now with a great deal of opportunism they're using the health crisis surrounding Zika to instill fear concerning pregnant women,” she said.
The president of the pro-life platform ArgentinosAlerta, Martín Patrito, warned that “we're dealing with bad policy, a lot of ideology, and a little science on the part of international organizations like the OAS and the World Health Organization.”
“Microcephaly has numerous causes, there are a lot of other viruses that can cause it and the impact of a lot of pesticides has still not been studied. And in any case, you have to fight the mosquito, not the children.”
The Zika outbreak has also led to debate in the US over the Helms Amendment, which bars US government aid from funding abortions when given to overseas groups working with reproductive health.
A vaccine for Zika has yet to be developed, but there are suggestions that infecting mosquitos with a bacterium could help prevent them from spreading Zika.
How Christians in Syria keep
the faith amid a civil war
By Matt Hadro
New York City, N.Y., May 5, 2016 / 03:20 pm (CNA/EWTN News) - (Editor's note: This article includes explicit descriptions of violence. Reader discretion is advised.)
In a Christian neighborhood inside war-torn Syria, a young boy was waiting to be discharged from a hospital after undergoing surgery. Suddenly the building shook from a bombing.
His mother, who was with him, ran out of the hospital to look for help. After she left, a bomb directly hit the building and her son was killed.
“She told me ‘My son was already prepared to be in heaven’,” Sister Maria de Guadalupe, a missionary in Syria with the Institute of the Incarnate Word, said of the mother. According to the mother, her son had recently reminded her of Christ’s Gospel admonition not to fear those who can kill the body, but rather those who can take the soul.
“This is what persecuted Christians live daily,” Sr. Maria said. “They say ‘Don’t worry – kill me. They can’t take away the heaven from me. You can take my head, you can burn my churches…when I die, I won’t die.”
Sr. Maria testified at the #WeAreN2016 international congress on religious freedom in New York City. The April 28-30 meeting detailed the plight of persecuted Christians in Syria, Iraq, and Nigeria, and asked the United Nations to take action to prevent further atrocities in those regions.
On Friday, the advocacy group CitizenGO delivered 400,000 signatures to the United Nations headquarters, petitioning the UN Security Council to declare that the Islamic State is committing genocide in Iraq and Syria against Christians and other religious minorities, and for the matter to be referred to the International Criminal Court for investigation and possible prosecution.
Sister Maria and Fr. Rodrigo Miranda, missionaries in the Institute of the Incarnate Word, both testified at the congress. They have lived in Aleppo during the Syrian civil war, and told the gathering of unspeakable atrocities committed against Christians there.
For Christians in Syria, life has been one long “Way of the Cross” since the civil war began five years ago.
“The media talked about [peaceful] demonstrations from the Syrian people, who looked for liberty and democracy,” Sr. Maria de Guadalupe recalled of the Arab Spring, though in reality “it was very different.”
Reports of non-Syrian armed groups entering Christian neighborhoods and killing Christians began to travel back to university students who were studying at the mission in Aleppo.
Thousands soon took to the streets of Aleppo “to demonstrate their support to the government” because they “preferred to keep going as they were,” Sr. Maria said. “Because what they saw coming wasn’t democracy.” What followed was “a war that nobody was expecting in Syria.” “Overnight, the armed groups started to seize the people in the cities.”
Aleppo, she noted, is the “most important city” and the “economic center of the country,” so terror groups targeted the city and besieged it for a full year. Electricity was available only one to two hours a day. Water came every 10 to 15 days.
“Then the city became war every single day,” Sr. Maria said. “And we have been living like that for five years.”
The Christian neighborhoods and churches have been targeted the most, she noted. There has been “total destruction” in the Christian communities, Fr. Rodrigo said, “especially during the important feasts of the Christian year.”
“So we always expect a massive attack during Christmas and Easter … They destroy our churches, monasteries, shelters, everything.”
After the Muslim preaching and prayer on Fridays, he said, his community would be “targeted, threatened, directly attacked, because we were the only Christian community in the area.”
Christians, he said, “are kidnapped, tortured, martyred, beheaded, cut in pieces.”
“Regularly they broke the windows of our houses and cars, or there were times when they entered into the houses of our consecrated sisters with knives, threatening of rape or martyrdom, commonly harassed them when they had to go on the streets.”
“Or they threw their cars or motorcycles against the children of our small Christian school. I personally defended my children from them.”
A Christian cemetery was also destroyed and the corpses desecrated and displayed in public, he said.
A Christian woman was tied to a pillar and beaten by passers-by until she would ask to convert to Islam. However, she never asked to convert, Sr. Maria said.
And children and priests have been special targets for brutality. They have been “buried alive” in front of their mothers, and beheaded with their heads put on spikes in public squares.
“Girls, mostly between 10 and 15 years old, are raped, up to ten times a day or more,” Fr. Rodrigo said, “and sold in the successful and growing prostitution market from the region and in the Western countries.”
Priests have also been targets of hatred. Fr. Rodrigo recounted the story of a 75 year-old Dutch missionary priest who “was kidnapped and shot twice in the back of the head because he was feeding the [poor].”
Other priests Fr. Rodrigo has talked to have had their bones broken and teeth knocked out, and have been starved nearly to death.
“Why? Political bias? Ethnic cleansing? He’s a priest, an imitator of Christ. The reason of this is the hatred of Jesus Christ,” Fr. Rodrigo said.
“If they persecute me, said our Lord, they will also persecute you. Christ is a sign of contradiction, and we are going to be the sign of contradiction in Syria and Iraq.”
For Fr. Rodrigo, “the motivation of today’s genocide is the same from the very beginning, from the roots of our very difficult coexistence with Islam.”
And the violence against Christians has continued to the present. On Saturday, Sr. Maria relayed a message from her community in Aleppo that “the city has been attacked terribly by rebels, the last desperate attempt to take the city.”
“There is no safe place in the whole city,” she continued. “A lot of Christians have died in the last few days. The rebels have said that this is a revenge. They will make civilians in the whole city to pay for the repression that they are receiving.”
“This is the ‘moderate’ opposition that we have in Syria,” she continued.
Yet the Christians, despite tremendous suffering, have seen their faith grow through it.
“Christians never blamed God for our situation. God created us free, and H=he respects our freedom,” Sr. Maria told CNA in an interview, through Fr. Rodrigo’s translation.
“Even because of a lot of suffering, God is powerful enough to take major goods from this situation. Because even when they’ve lost everything materially speaking, spiritually they have grown in faith and hope. And in this sense, they have won.”
“Suffering purifies faith and strengthens it,” she continued. “At the end of the day, the thing that we want is Eternal Life.”
“At the end of the day we have the cross that Jesus Christ gives us, and that is the way.”
Suffering also helps Christians to live as though every day is their last, because for Christians in Aleppo, it may well be their last day alive.
“Are we going to waste time in the last day of our life?” she asked in her Saturday testimony at the congress. “Are we going to keep living in sin in the last days of our lives? I can die today. I want to go to heaven. So today, I am going to make the most out of the day.”
Forgiveness is a hallmark of the Christian life, Fr. Rodrigo insisted. “Peace is a gift from above,” he said. “From God.”
“Forgiveness is in our blood, it’s in our divine blood because of grace,” he added. “Forgiveness is something so powerful that no one can give it except Jesus Christ.”
“It’s very difficult to speak and not to feel the instinct for revenge. So also we ask, from our Lord, the grace of forgiveness and the grace of mercy for all the people who’s responsible.”
“We are missionaries, and we have the opportunity, the possibility to live with the martyrs of our time. This is a privilege,” Sr. Maria concluded.
Receiving Charlemagne Prize,
Pope says 'I have a dream' for Europe
by Elise Harris
Vatican City, May 6, 2016 / 06:18 am (CNA/EWTN News) - As he received the prestigious Charlemagne Prize Friday, Pope Francis laid out his vision for a renewed European continent in what could easily be his own version of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
In the May 6 address Francis said “I dream of a new European humanism” – one based on a fresh ideas and a revamped economy that promotes integration and respect for human dignity.
Europe has become tired and “entrenched,” he said, and voiced hope that the continent’s leaders would be able to “draw inspiration from the past in order to confront with courage the complex multipolar framework of our own day.”
He asked that European leaders “take up with determination the challenge of updating the idea of Europe” – a Europe capable of giving birth to “a new humanism” based on the core abilities to integrate, dialogue and generate new ideas and solutions to complex modern issues.
“I dream of a Europe that is young, still capable of being a mother: a mother who has life because she respects life and offers hope for life. I dream of a Europe that cares for children, that offers fraternal help to the poor and those newcomers seeking acceptance because they have lost everything,” he said.
He expressed his desire for a Europe “where being a migrant is not a crime but a summons to greater commitment on behalf of the dignity of every human being,” and where youth can “breathe the pure air of honesty” in a culture that is “undefiled by the insatiable needs of consumerism.”
The Pope said he also longed for a culture in which “getting married and having children is a responsibility and a great joy, not a problem due to the lack of stable employment. I dream of a Europe of families, with truly effective policies concentrated on faces rather than numbers, on birth rates more than rates of consumption.”
“I dream of a Europe that promotes and protects the rights of everyone, without neglecting its duties towards all,” he said, and voiced his hope for a Europe “of which it will not be said that its commitment to human rights was its last utopia.”
Pope Francis received the International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen inside the Vatican’s Sala Regia as an award for his for efforts toward the unification of Europe – an event which drew leaders from across Europe to discuss the state of the European Union.
Founded in 1950 by Dr. Kurt Pfeiffer, the Charlemagne Prize is “the oldest and best-known prize awarded for work done in the service of European unification,” according to the organization’s website.
The announcement of Pope Francis’ selection for the 2016 prize was initially made in December 2015.
He is the second religious leader to receive the prize, the first being St. John Paul II, who in 2004 was awarded an “extraordinary” version of the prize, while the ordinary version that year was given to Irish politician Patrick Cox.
While the ceremony for awarding the prize is typically held in Aachen on the Feast of the Ascension, an exception was made for Pope Francis, who requested to hold festivities in the Vatican. The same was done for St. John Paul II when he received an extraordinary version of the prize.
Present at Pope Francis’ reception of the Charlemagne Prize were Marcel Philipp, mayor of Aachen; Martin Schulz, president of European Parliament; Jean Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, and Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, who had a private audience with the Pope before the conferral ceremony began.
Schulz, Juncker and Tusk met with Pope Francis in a private audience before the ceremony began. They each offered brief remarks at the beginning of the event before the Pope himself spoke.
Other guests present included past winners of the prize such as Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant’Egidio community; King Felipe of Spain; Dalia Grybauskaite, president of Lithuania; and Patrick Cox, former president of European Parliament and German chancellor Angela Merkel, who was awarded the prize in 2008, and who also met with the Pope in a private audience before the celebration.
In his lengthy, wide-spread speech, Pope Francis echoed ideas similar to those he expressed during his Nov. 25, 2014 visit to Strasbourg where he spoke to both the European Parliament and Council, urging a “grandmother Europe” go back to her foundational values.
He told the various political leaders and heads of state present that “creativity, genius and a capacity for rebirth and renewal are part of the soul of Europe,” but that the energetic efforts for unity that arose after World War Two and the Cold War have since deflated.
“There is an impression that Europe is declining, that it has lost its ability to be innovative and creative, and that it is more concerned with preserving and dominating spaces than with generating processes of inclusion and change,” he said.
Rather than being open to new social projects capable of engaging all individuals and groups, the continent is becoming increasingly “entrenched,” he said, and echoed the words of writer Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, who said that we need a major “memory transfusion.”
He stressed the need to go back and listen to the voice of Europe’s forefathers, “were prepared to pursue alternative and innovative paths in a world scarred by war.”
Pointing to French statesman Robert Schuman, the Pope echoed his insistence at the birth of the first European Community that the continent couldn’t be built all at once, but “through concrete achievements which first create a ‘de facto solidarity.’”
“Today, in our own world, marked by so much conflict and suffering, there is a need to return to the same ‘de facto solidarity’ and concrete generosity that followed the Second World War,” he said.
“Today more than ever, their vision inspires us to build bridges and tear down walls. That vision urges us not to be content with cosmetic retouches or convoluted compromises aimed at correcting this or that treaty, but courageously to lay new and solid foundations.”
Francis pointed to the ability to integrate, dialogue and generate, which he said are key capacities that will assist in the “update” of the European continent.
He stressed the need to combine various levels of diversity in order for a “healthy coexistence,” explaining that “forms of reductionism and attempts at uniformity, far from generating value, condemn our peoples to a cruel poverty: the poverty of exclusion.”
“Far from bestowing grandeur, riches and beauty, exclusion leads to vulgarity, narrowness, and cruelty. Far from bestowing nobility of spirit, it brings meanness,” he said, and stressed the need for an integral solidarity based on Europe’s “dynamic and multicultural identity.”
The Pope also stressed the importance of cultural integration, rather than merely resettling foreigners geographically, allowing European peoples to overcome “the temptation of falling back on unilateral paradigms and opting for forms of ideological colonization.”
Francis advocated for a culture of dialogue involving “a discipline that enables us to view others as valid dialogue partners, to respect the foreigner, the immigrant and people from different cultures as worthy of being listened to.”
“Today we urgently need to build coalitions that are not only military and economic, but cultural, educational, philosophical and religious,” he said, and encouraged the leaders to arm their people “with the culture of dialogue and encounter.”
Pope Francis stressed that “no one can remain a mere onlooker or bystander” in the process, but that everyone, from the smallest to the greatest, has an active role to play.
Youth in particular have a special role, he said, and encouraged the creation of new employment opportunities for the youth as well as a just distribution of the earth’s resources.
To create dignified, well-paying jobs “requires coming up with new, more inclusive and equitable economic models, aimed not at serving the few, but at benefiting ordinary people and society as a whole,” he said.
Doing this “calls for moving from a liquid economy to a social economy,” he said, and pointed to the social market economy described by St. John Paul II’s Nov. 8, 1990, speech to the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany.
“It would involve passing from an economy directed at revenue, profiting from speculation and lending at interest, to a social economy that invests in persons by creating jobs and providing training,” he said, adding that “we need to move from a liquid economy prepared to use corruption as a means of obtaining profits to a social economy that guarantees access to land and lodging through labor.”
The Church also has a role to play in this regard through her mission of proclaiming the Gospel and binding the wounds of humanity, Francis said, adding that that the effort Christians put toward full unity is “a great sign of the times and a response to the Lord’s prayer that they may all be one.”
Pope Francis closed his speech by voicing his dream for “a new European humanism” based on the welcome for foreigners, care for the poor, and respect for human life and dignity.
Jesus' closeness to sinners isn’t a scandal
– it's an example, Pope says
by Elise Harris
Vatican City, May 4, 2016 / 04:37 am (CNA/EWTN News) - On Wednesday Pope Francis said the parable of the Good Shepherd is a key example of God’s mercy, because it represents the depth of the Lord's concern in ensuring that no one is lost.
The parable “represents Jesus’ solicitude toward sinners and the mercy of God which is not resigned to losing anyone,” the Pope said May 4.
Jesus tells the parable in order to make the people understand that his closeness to sinners “shouldn’t scandalize, but on the contrary provoke in all a serious reflection on how we live our faith,” he said.
Francis stressed that God’s mercy toward sinners is the personal style with which he acts, and “he is absolutely faithful to that mercy: nothing and no one can dissuade him from his will for salvation.”
The shepherd, he said, can always be found “where the lost sheep is…the Lord is therefore to be sought there, where he wants to meet us, not where we pretend to find him!”
Pope Francis spoke to the thousands of pilgrims present in St. Peter’s Square for his general audience. He focused his speech for the event on the parable of the Good Shepherd, in which the shepherd leaves the 99 in his flock and goes out in search of the one who is lost.
The Pope noted that there are two perspectives in the parable, the first being that of the sinners who draw near to Jesus and listen to him, while the second is that of “the suspicious doctors of the law and scribes” who distance themselves from the Lord and his behavior.
As the story unfolds, it does so around three main characters, he said, naming them as “the shepherd, the lost sheep and the rest of the flock.”
The only one who to act, however, “is the shepherd, not the sheep,” the Pope said, noting that the shepherd “is the only true protagonist and everything depends on him.”
However, Francis observed that “a paradox” in the parable that could cause one to doubt the shepherd’s actions is found with the question “is it wise to abandon the 99 for only one sheep? And most importantly not in the safety of the sheepfold, but in the desert?”
In the bible the desert is typically a place symbolic of death in which food, water and shelter are hard to find, he said, asking “what can the 99 do to defend themselves?”
The paradox continues, Pope Francis said, when, after having found the sheep, the shepherd “carries it on his shoulders, goes home, calls his friends and neighbors and says to them: ‘rejoice with me.’”
Straining oneself to reach just one sheep might seem like the shepherd has forgotten the other 99, he said, but noted that “in reality it’s not like this.”
What Jesus wants to teach through the parable is that that “no sheep can be lost. The Lord cannot accept the fact that even one single person can be lost,” the Pope said, adding that this is “a burning desire.”
“Neither can the 99 sheep stop the shepherd and keep him closed in the flock,” he said, and spoke about the importance of “going outside of ourselves.”
While looking for the lost sheep, the shepherd “provokes the 99 so that they participate in the reunification of the flock,” Francis said, adding that there is no way to reassemble the flock other than following the path outlined by the mercy of the shepherd.
He encouraged pilgrims to think about the parable often, since in the Christian community there is always someone “missing who left, leaving an empty space.”
Although this reality can at times be discouraging and lead us to believe that the departure of a brother or sister from the community is an inevitable, “incurable disease,” the Pope said this is not the case.
Francis cautioned against running from this danger and “locking ourselves inside of the flock, where there is not the smell of the sheep, but the stench of the closed!”
When this happens, he said, it is because we have lost “the missionary impulse” that leads us to encounter others.
Pope Francis closed his audience by emphasizing that “no distance can keep the shepherd away, and no flock can renounce a brother.”
To find one that is lost, he said, “is the joy of the shepherd and of God, but also the joy of the entire flock! We are all sheep who have been found and gathered by the mercy of the Lord, and together with him are called to gather the entire flock!”
Pope Francis' May prayer intention:
honor the dignity of women
By Elise Harris
Vatican City, May 3, 2016 / 11:48 am (CNA/EWTN News) - In his May prayer video Pope Francis issued a global petition that women in all countries would be respected and valued, asking rhetorically if the mere recognition of their role is enough, or if more can be done.
“The contribution of women in all areas of human activity is undeniable, beginning with the family. But only to recognize it – is that enough?” the Pope asked in the video, published May 3.
“We have done little for women who are in very difficult situations: despised, marginalized, and even reduced to slavery,” he said, stressing that “we must condemn sexual violence against women and remove the barriers that prevent their full integration into social, political and economic life.”
The Pope speaks in Spanish as images of women working in various fields, including science, teaching, and medicine flash across the screen. However, women in desperate, marginalized circumstances also appear next to phrases such as “I do my job as well as a man,” “I will never be a slave,” “no gender violence,” and “enough of discrimination at work.”
A final image of a woman writing on a chalkboard appears next to the phrase “men and women are children of God,” as Francis asks viewers to join in his heartfelt petition “that in all countries of the world women may be honored and respected and valued for their essential contribution to society.”
Pope Francis’ prayer video was the latest in a new series of short clips dedicated to his monthly prayer intentions, called “The Pope Video.”
An initiative of the Jesuit-run global prayer network Apostleship of Prayer, the videos are filmed in collaboration with the Vatican Television Center and mark the first time the Pope’s monthly prayer intentions have been featured on video.
Since the late 1800s the organization has also received a monthly, universal intention from the Pope. In 1929 an additional missionary intention was added by the Holy Father, aimed at the faithful in particular.
While there are two intentions, the prayer videos are centered on the first, universal intention.
The universal intention is that “in every country of the world, women may be honored and respected and that their essential contribution to society may be highly esteemed.”
The Pope’s missionary intention for May, which is dedicated to Mary, is that “families, communities, and groups may pray the Holy Rosary for evangelization and peace.”
The Pope’s May video was released the same day as a new version of a Vatican publication on women, called “Women, Church, World,” which is linked to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
Established in 2012, the publication has been expanded to a 40 page, color magazine published every two months and designed to give voice to women from around the world on a variety of topics related to the role of women in the world.
In addition to covering the traditional topics of major questions linked to the role of women in the Church, the new version of the magazine will now include two new meditations on the topic of each specific edition. The first is a meditation on scripture, while the second will be dedicated to art.
The May edition has already been released and is dedicated to the same topic as the first edition of the publication in 2012: the Visitation.
Future editions will reflect on different aspects of feminine identity such as: Maternity as caring for the world; Maternity as reconciliation, taking into account various testimonies of reconciliation from around the world; Women and Canon Law; Forgotten women and Women of prayer.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who spoke at the May 3 presentation of the new version of the magazine, said in comments to journalists that the publication is “a very important initiative” in terms of understanding and reflecting on the role of women in the Church.
He noted how women have made contributions of “exceptional value” to the Church throughout history, and named St. Catherine of Siena as one of the Church’s most influential female giants.
“If one thinks about the role St. Catherine of Siena had, in the spiritual life but also in the life of the Church, she was a great politician (and) she was a diplomat, so she had a large role. She truly influenced the life of the Church,” he said.
The cardinal condemned the idea that there ought to be a “gender quota” in the Vatican, and stressed that in his experience, what women really want is “to advance with their merits (and) their abilities, without reserved institutional spaces.”
Women, he said, “must have their contribution for what they are, for what they do,” and not so much for what is set aside for them. This, he said, is why he sense a certain “reluctance to accept this concept of the gender quota.”
In terms of top positions or management roles in the Church, Cardinal Parolin stressed that the Church has positions “that are already definitive,” such as when it comes to the priesthood, for example.
In order to overcome an attitude of machismo within the Church, the cardinal encouraged the promotion of initiatives, such as the magazine, which create space for women to have a voice and give their own contributions, and which “nourish what can also be a heritage” for the Church and for the world.
Why Iraq wasn't what I thought
By Elise Harris
Erbil, Iraq, May 1, 2016 / 04:02 pm (CNA) - Loai Behnam Toubia pulls up his shirt, uncovering a thick, dark scar – probably 10 inches long – that tears vertically down his large, round belly.
With a cockeyed arm he points to three smaller scars that decorate the left side of his misshaped abdomen, marking the times he was shot when ISIS opened fire on his car last year.
I stand in the dust surrounded by rows of boxy prefab trailers listening to his story. I focus on the scar marking where the bullet that landed just centimeters below his heart entered his thick body.
My translator recounts the terrifying story of how Toubia's car burst into flames in the middle of the road he had been driving between Qaraqosh and the small village of Shikhan when ISIS opened fire.
He was pulled to safety by passersby just in time. Now, having barely survived the ordeal, he says that “it was grace that saved me.”
With a body marred by gruesome scars, he carries on.
Toubia had been a taxi driver in Qaraqosh – the former Christian capital of Iraq now in the clutches of ISIS after the militants stormed the city, lighting up the night sky with bombs and gunfire Aug. 6, 2014.
Like the 120,000 others who fled with him, Toubia heard late that night that ISIS was coming and crammed his family and a few belongings into his taxi and sped toward Erbil in stop and go traffic alongside the thousands of others who were headed to the same destination.
Since then Toubia has been among the 5,500 Christians, including more than 2,000 children, living in the city’s Aishty 2 camp for the displaced. He had attempted to continue working, driving people from one city to another for income until his car was shot up by ISIS. Now, after losing his home, his livelihood, and with a body marred by gruesome scars, he tries to carry on, and says that he is “happy to be alive.”
This is Erbil, Iraq – home to nearly 70,000 internally displaced persons, most of them Christians.
Toubia's is just one among the many similar stories I came across last month when I spent six days in Iraq as part of a media delegation accompanying Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York on a pastoral visit to Erbil and Dohuk. The two cities are where the majority of those who fled their homes are now living in camps after ISIS swept across the Plains of Nineveh in the summer of 2014.
We as a delegation spent our time visiting various schools, projects and camps set up for the hundreds of thousands of refugees – internally displaced persons (IDPs) – who left their homes, and in many cases their livelihoods, behind in one night. Most of them are Christians and Yazidis from Mosul and Qaraqosh.
The trip was nothing like I had expected.
There were moments when what I saw and heard took my breath. I smiled. I choked back tears. I found myself fidgety, nervous.
As an American I have to admit that I was anticipating some hostility and a fair amount of blame from the people for their present situation. But that was not at all what happened.
Instead, what I encountered from the people was the opposite: I was received by them warmly with open arms: women embraced me, kissed me on each cheek and pulled me into their trailers, forcing fruit and Pepsi into my hands. The men were quick to shake my hand and the children all ran up and asked for their picture to be taken. A woman dying from cancer – who may or may not have access to pain meds – welcomed me into the small trailer she has now been confined to living in and beckoned me to her bedside. Wincing and short of breath, she grabbed my face, kissed my cheeks and whispered “thank you.”
Not once did I experience a moment of hostility, but instead my eyes were met by the tearful gaze of so many who feel completely alone and abandoned, but a gaze which at the same time was filled with joy because my presence there, however brief, brought with it the hope that the world had not forgotten them, and that maybe soon help would come and they would be able to return home.
What it's really like to live in a refugee camp
Erbil itself is a city frozen in time. Only a few years ago it was on the fast track to becoming the next Qatar or Dubai of the Middle East: construction was booming and everywhere new buildings and condominiums were popping up in what was a promising upward economic tilt. However, after the rise of the Islamic State and the sharp fall of oil prices, the construction came to a screeching halt and building projects, highway remodels and construction renovations were simply abandoned. Incomplete edifices, one of which was to be a large new shopping mall, are scattered throughout the city.
As investors, homeowners and contractors suddenly found their pockets empty and their hands tied up in litigation, families fleeing from ISIS poured into the unfinished buildings and took refuge. Some have been living there ever since, while the majority have gone to one of the many camps that have been formed throughout Erbil.
The stench of sewage wafts into rooms and coats the air.
Once the grim reality set in that it would be more than just a few days or weeks before the people could go home, the Church acted swiftly and aggressively in setting up the camps. Most of them are overcrowded, with families packed into prefabricated trailers between 1-3 rooms each, at times housing 8 people or more. The largest Christian camp in Erbil, called the Aishty camp, is located in the Christian suburb of Ain Qawa, and is divided into three smaller camps: Aishty 1, 2 and 3.
Fardos, who lives in a squashed, two-room trailer in Aishty 1 with five other members of her family, including her mother and children, worries that the snakes and insects that creep into the trailer will get to her infant daughter.
As I squeezed in with the family around their humble kitchen table, Fardos told me they all escaped from Qaraqosh Aug. 6, 2014, when ISIS attacked. When they got to Erbil, they initially took refuge inside a church hall, where they slept on the floor along with 14 other families, numbering more than 100 people in total. There was barely enough room to walk between the people, and at night they couldn’t get up without disturbing the others. After moving into the camp, problems abounded.
Bathrooms were few and hard to get to, there was little space inside their flimsy trailer, they had no water and “the room stunk a lot.”
While the majority of the issues have been taken care of, the stench of sewage from where the water is hooked up under the trailer wafts into the rooms every now and then and coats the air. Many of the 250 families in Aishty 1, roughly 1,000 people, live in 1 room compartments set up inside a warehouse with no windows. Though they now have bathrooms, the camp still doesn’t have showers, leaving residents, including many elderly, the option of either not bathing, or walking long distances to other camps where they can freshen up.
On our second day in Iraq we as a delegation took the long, bumpy road to Dohuk, which sits near the Iraqi border with Turkey, and near Mosul. The city is where the majority of the Yazidis fled and is the closest we came to ISIS territory.
As we walked into the Dawodiya camp – which is about 60-70 percent Yazidi, followed by Christians and a few Muslims – the smell wasn’t initially obvious. The stench of sewage sets in only after a few minutes. It comes in waves with a gust of the breeze that carries the scent of the murky water flowing in thin canals carved into the dirt pathways that snake through the camp for drainage.
Suffering abounded in each of the “homes” we entered. My heart ached as I walked into the trailer of a grieving mother whose son, just one month after being married, joined the Kurdish army forces, known as the Peshmerga. He was killed after only a few weeks of fighting ISIS on the front lines, and is referred to as one of “the martyrs.” His picture now hangs on the wall of his mother’s trailer with a rosary draped over it.
Another story that made my stomach churn was that of Hazar Namir, a 32-year-old Yazidi woman born in Sinjar. As our delegation crammed into her trailer, we were told that she, her husband and their three sons were all abducted by ISIS when the militants stormed the city Aug. 3, 2014. While Hazar and their sons managed to escape in November 2015, after more than a year in captivity, her husband remains in the hands of ISIS.
What had they done to her? Did she know where her husband was? Did she have nightmares?
As the rest of our delegation piled out of her tiny home, I lingered for a few moments and asked to take her picture. Once the men had left (I was one of only two women in the delegation), she lowered the black fabric covering the lower half of her face and flashed me a confident, yet reserved, almost bashful smile. As I smiled back and captured her flawless beauty in digital form, I couldn’t help but wonder why she felt so open with me – did she trust me? Why? How could her eyes still sparkle so brightly and familiarly when her family had experienced such terror and undergone so much suffering? What had they done to her? Did she know where her husband was? Did she have nightmares about what was happening to him, or what had happened to her and her sons? Does she feel safe?
These are the questions that raced through my mind over and over as I met with different families and spoke with different people, most of whom are desperate and confused.
Should they stay or should they go? What the displaced really want
What most of the displaced want is to go back home. But with the situation showing precious little improvement many have become fed up, and are thinking of going abroad. While hopes of returning might have been higher after the initial displacement in 2014, they have significantly diminished now that the situation has drug on for some 20 months. The people are conflicted and have steadily become more and more impatient. The future is no clearer than it was two years ago – if anything, it's foggier, especially for Christians.
“If we were not believers, half of us would be suicidal.”
This is what Ibrahim Shaba Lalo, the director of Ain Qawa’s Aishty 2 camp told me when asked about the mental state of the people living in the camps and how they are handling the situation. For many hope is small and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel, he said, explaining that many are thinking about leaving, fueling growing concerns that within a few years Iraq will be empty of Christians if their land is not liberated.
However, despite the growing sense of desperation among the people, I also found a surprising resilience and determination on the part of many to stay; to return to their land and their homes. But the solution to getting these people home isn’t an easy one, especially since liberating the cities taken by ISIS has proved to be a much longer task than anyone initially thought. Most thought they would be home in a few days, or a week at most. Instead, the days became weeks, weeks became months and the months have now become years.
For many, one question hangs densely in the air: now what?
A parish priest in Alqosh, the only remaining Christian village on the Plain of Nineveh not captured by ISIS, told me as he sipped from a typical Iraqi glass teacup that in the time that’s passed, “we have understood now that ISIS is a game.”
“It is the world’s game” in which it has become clear that certain nations “want ISIS to stay” either for the economic benefit of selling them weapons, or to keep the war out of their own territory. Even if entire nations are crumbling in the process, it’s not a concern for those whose pockets are being lined, he said.
The majority of locals I spoke with share the same anger and frustration, and pin the majority of the fault for funding ISIS on neighboring Middle Eastern nations such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Despite their open sense of welcome and generosity toward me, most Iraqis do blame the United States for the rise of the Islamic State and for the chaos that has ensued since the end of the war in 2003. Yet, in my time there I also discovered that they believe the U.S. is one of the only nations that has enough influence in the international community to do something about it. The religious leaders in the area practically begged Cardinal Dolan to advocate to the U.S. government on their behalf once he returned to New York.
Many of the displaced hold out hope that a current offensive to retake the city of Mosul will be successful, and that Qaraqosh will be liberated soon after. There is hopeful buzz in the community that within a year both cities will be taken back and made livable soon after, yet a skeptical shadow of doubt still shrouds the hopes of many, who are frustrated that more action has not been taken at this point.
Ecclesiastic leaders such as Archbishop Bashar Warda, Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil, praised the recent decision of the U.S. government to declare ISIS persecution of Christians, Yazidis and Shia Muslims genocide, saying it “does justice to the victims.” On April 20 the UK parliament became the most recent nation to follow suit.
But while these decisions are a step in the right direction, for many of the displaced these declarations on the part of governments are too little, too late. They are thankful the world has finally decided to call a spade a spade, yet for many one question hangs densely in the air: now what?
U2's lead guitarist rocks
Sistine Chapel in concert
for a cure
Vatican City, May 3, 2016 / 03:31 am (CNA).- Lead guitarist The Edge from Irish rock band sensation U2 played “the most beautiful parish hall in the world” this weekend – the Sistine Chapel.
The performance, the first-ever rock concert in the historic chapel, was given for about 200 doctors and researchers who attended a conference at the Vatican last week on regenerative medicine. The conference discussed the use of adult stem cells to cure difficult and rare diseases such as cancer.
The Edge, whose real name is David Evans, wore his signature black beanie while he played and sang a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “If it be your will,” and renditions of U2 songs “Yahweh,” “Ordinary love” and “Walk on.”
The rock star, who has experienced the effects of cancer in his own life – his father died from cancer last month and his daughter once had leukemia – peppered his performance with references to some technical cancer terms.
“I can tell this is a really cool audience because normally when I say ‘angiogenesis,’ eyes glaze over,” he said, according to Reuters. Angiogenesis is the process through which new blood vessels are formed that feed the growth of tumors. Researchers and scientists are looking for ways to prevent angiogenesis.
The Edge, who was accompanied by a choir of seven Irish teenagers during his performance, also joked that he was a bit shocked when he was asked to play and sing at the Vatican.
“When they asked me if I wanted to become the first contemporary artist to play in the Sistine Chapel, I didn’t know what to say because usually there’s this other guy who sings,” he said, referring to U2’s lead singer Bono.
He also thanked Pope Francis and Vatican officials for allowing him to play in “the most beautiful parish hall in the world.”
“Being Irish you learn very early that if you want to be asked to come back it’s very important to thank the local parish priest for the loan of the hall,” he said.
The singer dedicated his performance of the 2000 song “Walk On” to Pope Francis, who he called “the people’s pope.”
“He’s doing an amazing job and long may he continue,” he said.
The Cellular Horizons conference was hosted at the Vatican by the U.S.-based Stem for Life Foundation. Speakers at the conference included Pope Francis and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who is advocating for a global push to end cancer.