GUEST columns ‘The
GUEST columns ‘The Enemy Is Within’ Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, Iraq, spoke at the Armagh Diocesan Pastoral Centre in Dundalk, Ireland, on March 16. Here are excerpts from his presentation, “Persecuted and Forgotten?” to Aid to the Church in Need. Archbishop Bashar Warda special to the chaldean news Our place as one of the original inhabitants of the region has been wiped from collective memory. In many countries like Iraq, the situation for Christians seems to be worsening, sometimes to the point where we wonder if we will survive as a people in our own country. But this is not a time to hide our faith or our identity over such struggles. In Iraq, 40 years of war and oppression have strengthened our endurance and our resolve to stand strong and to claim our legal and historical right as a Church and as a people in Iraq. We have not come this far to give up. What we Iraqis are suffering is a crisis in cultural change. We are living in a region that cannot decide if it is for democracy or Islamic law. It cannot decide if it is for the rights of human beings to live in freedom in all its exciting and challenging forms, or if it is for the control of the spirit and the minds of its people. The Middle East now is fertile for terror and domination, a region founded upon a cultural and social environment that has depended on violence to keep its societies divided. History and a tribal mentality have been used to maintain that violence and those divisions. The Crusades, the aggressive West, Israel and American Christians are pointed to as the enemies. Yet, in reality, the enemy is within. Iraqis are left with a weak constitution that tries to please two masters: on the one hand, the premise of human rights supposedly for all its citizens, yet on the other, Islamic law for its majority of Muslims. Islamists are not the only ones at fault. Secularists with an eye for profit are also responsible, as are neighboring governments feeding the insurgents with money and weapons to destabilize the government. The rest of world’s governments have turned their backs on us, as if the human rights abuses and neargenocide conditions Iraqi Christians experience are temporary. Yet for nearly 50 years, Christians in Iraq have suffered displacement and negligence. Dozens of Christian villages were destroyed in the 1950s and ‘60s as Iraq evolved from a kingdom to a republic, and this displacement continued into the years of Saddam Hussein. Christian history is noticeably absent from the Iraqi history books used in our public schools. Our place as one of the original inhabitants of the region has been wiped from collective memory. We are merely one of the non-Muslim, minority inhabitants of Iraq, lacking all the rights and rewards that full citizenship in a real democracy should bring us. During the Gulf War years, the Christian population in Iraq was estimated between 1.2 and 1.4 million. By 2003, it had dropped by more than half a million. Iraq’s Christian population now numbers less that 500,000 and this figure is highly optimistic. Since the occupation of Iraq in 2003 more than 500 Christians have been killed in religious and politically motivated conflicts. Forty percent of the killings took place in northern Iraq, 58 percent in the Baghdad region and 2 percent in the south. There have been direct threats using intimidating letters with bullets placed inside; text messages directly sent to families; person-to-person threats on the streets; threatening language from police and army representatives; threatening graffiti with Koranic text; breaking into houses, stealing possessions or making extortion threats; and armed men standing in front of Christian homes or in cars. Our college students are also severely intimidated, and thousands have delayed their studies or transferred to Erbil for their course work. A total of 66 churches have been attacked or bombed: 41 in Baghdad, 19 in Mosul, five in Kirkuk and one in Ramadi. In addition, two convents, one monastery and a church orphanage were bombed. On October 31, 2010, 58 people, including 51 hostages and two priests, were killed after an attack on Our Lady of Salvation Syrian Catholic Church in Baghdad. A group affiliated to Al-Qaida, Islamic State for Iraq, stated that Christians were a “legitimate target.” Each family has suffered decades of losses from the Saddam regime, the sanctions prior to the occupation, the devastation of the Gulf War as well as the Iran/Iraq War. Iraqis are a people who have experienced immense suffering but who are also strong, resilient and prepared to claim their right to existence. Estimates suggest that more than half the population has fled the country with hundreds of thousands in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. At least a million more Iraqis live in the U.S., the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia and others. The Kurdistan region, overall, has been a relocation site for more than 55,000 internally displaced persons from other cities in the past seven years. The population has grown significantly since 2003. More recently, about 4,000 Christian families have fled to Erbil. Probably twice this many have moved from Baghdad and Mosul City into the Nineveh Valley, where life is relatively safer and more affordable. Over the past eight years our Erbil Diocese Immigration Committee has registered more than 3,000 families displaced by conflict. (Not all families register so we know this is an under-estimate.) Once Church leaders are assured that our families are safely relocated, we have three main goals to assist them. First, we want to provide stability via employment and affordable housing. Second, we want to be sure that families have access to good education and medical care. Thirdly and most importantly, we want a vibrant, living Church to support the social and spiritual needs of our families. We are working hard to make these things happen, but the resources of Erbil and its neighboring dioceses have been stressed because of the high influx of people over this short period. Erbil Diocese has grown by more than 30 percent with churches, schools, health care facilities, housing and basic infrastructures feeling the burden. Schools average 35-45 children per class, running in two shifts a day. Housing costs have skyrocketed as homeowners have raised rents 200-300 percent. Diocese leaders are raising funds from inside the communities and donor organizations such as Aid to the Church in Need are helping to build and restore churches. Classrooms are being built and restored for Catechism classes and community education. A new Catholic primary school building has been funded to ease the burden of public education in the area. Church leaders are looking to construct low-cost housing for displaced families, and continue to search for development investments to stimulate the job economy and employ displaced family members. The greatest concern is that there are enough strong parishes prepared to assist families as they continue to readjust their lives. If families are not assisted effectively and embraced by the community, we will lose them from the Church and to immigration outside of Iraq. We want the presence of the Christian Church to be apparent by a vibrant and active parish life symbolized by physical church buildings and obvious public spaces. We do not want to hide our faith or identity out of fear for our lives. We want to be seen and remembered by all Iraqis — those who threaten us, but moreover those willing to stand in solidarity with us. Courtesy zenith.org. To read Archbishop Warda’s remarks in their entirety, visit our website, chaldeannews.com. 10 CHALDEAN NEWS MAY 2011
Iraqi Refugees Renew Our Church Following is a translation of a letter written in March by Maronite Archbishop Samir Nassar of Damascus, Syria, entitled “Thanks to the Iraqi Refugees.” Syria has facilitated the reception of Iraqi refugees. Thousands of them have come, above all to Damascus, and hundreds of them continue to come to flee from death and the violence they have suffered since 2003. U.N. agencies organize their exodus to other more clement skies. While waiting for their visas, these refugees stay in Damascus, at times for two or three years and sometimes more. These well-formed Christians, fervent and practicing, take refuge in Christian faith and hope. They fill our churches, invigorate our parishes and reinforce the Christian faith in Syria, offering new encouragement to our parishes. Archbishop Samir Nassar special to the chaldean news Iraqi refugees take part assiduously in daily Mass despite the fact they come from far away, on foot or public transport. On asking for confession before receiving Communion, these refugees have accelerated the return to the confessional which now has waiting queues. Their devotion to the saints and veneration of the Virgin has relaunched the production of candles and the niches of the saints both within and outside the churches are illuminated day and night. Their children are numerous in the catechism and first Communion classes. Young people are involved in the choirs and liturgies of different churches. The war spread information technology rapidly in Iraq. These refugees who have arrived in Damascus are very familiar with the Internet and the Web. They have put their knowledge in a generous way at the service of parishes and communities. In this way, thanks to them, our parishes have been equipped with websites, vanguard instruments at the service of evangelization at a universal scale. Moved by profound piety, they come together in dozens, two or three times a week, to do the great cleaning of the cathedral and the Square of the Church until they receive their visas. Before traveling, they ensure the takeover of this activity. They take part in prayer vigils, Eucharistic adoration, pilgrimages and processions on the streets of Damascus during Holy Week and especially in the month of May. Their spiritual dynamism attracts other communities; one of our priests gives a helping hand in the Chaldean parish. Despite their poverty and precarious condition of life, they are generous and know how to share. Suffice it to see them as they leave Mass giving help with joy, a smile and tears. They live their more intimate moments in silence before the Most Blessed Sacrament, face to face with the Lord. For hours, they mourn the death of their loved ones and wonder about the future. And they try to understand the reason why. They arrive in great numbers at the archbishopric every week to say goodbye before traveling to the unknown, and at times separated: parents to Australia, children to Canada. Even in exile they cannot live as a family, an even more painful wrench. These Iraqi refugees passing though Damascus are itinerant missionaries who have left their imprint on the Church in Syria, which sees them pass by and wonders about its own future. The synod of Christians of the East was an opportunity and a hope which, however, has been unable to halt the exodus. These missionary refugees scattered in the four corners of the world are united only by prayer and the Internet, as their roots have been torn and they live the twilight of their Church. Will these Iraqi refugees, with their religious vitality, offer a new encouragement to the Churches of the East that receive them? Translation courtesy of Zenit. 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