IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Jeffrey
By Paul Jeffrey
IRBIL, Iraq (CNS) — A
delegation of U.S. Catholic leaders visiting northern Iraq was challenged to go
home and work for peace in the troubled region.
“You have come to listen to
your brothers and sisters in Iraq who are suffering. The situation is very
hard. We cry out with one voice, ‘Don’t forget us,'” Auxiliary Bishop
Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad said during a Mass in the small village of Inishke,
near Dahuk.
The Chaldean Catholic service
included members of the local Christian community, as well as Christians who
were displaced by the Islamic State group from elsewhere in Iraq.
Representatives of the Yezidi and Muslim communities also greeted the
delegation, which was headed by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, chair of
the Catholic Near East Welfare Association. He was accompanied by Bishop
William F. Murphy of Rockville Centre, New York, who is also on the CNEWA
board.
The group spent April 9-11 in
Kurdistan, the autonomous region of northern Iraq. When Islamic State swept
through Mosul and Qaraqosh in 2014, more than 125,000 Christians, along with
other victims, fled to safety in Kurdistan, where CNEWA has helped local
churches construct housing, clinics and schools.
Yet Bishop Warduni said peace
trumps humanitarian aid any day.
“We don’t want anything.
Iraq is very rich, but now it is very poor. We only want our rights to go back
to our homes and villages,” he said.
Looking directly at Cardinal
Dolan, Bishop Warduni said: “We need a good Samaritan, but a new one, and
this is you, along with the other leaders who came with you. We thank you and
your people, for they have done so much for us with their prayers and with
their money. But we ask you to ask your government to establish peace in our
country. Tell your president, please, that our children and our youth want to
grow in freedom. Your Eminence, take with you our good wishes to your faithful,
and don’t forget us.”
In his homily for the Mass,
Cardinal Dolan told those packed into the small church: “You are now
suffering away from your homes and families. You are on the cross with Jesus.
But we can never forget that Easter always conquers Good Friday. The
resurrection always triumphs over the cross.”
Speaking through a translator because the service was in Aramaic, Cardinal Dolan said: “Jesus is alive in the
love and charity that his people have for one another. That is why in our time
here in Kurdistan we have seen Jesus alive in hospitals and clinics and refugee
camps and schools and parishes like this. And it is our privilege to be able to
be part of this love and charity that you have for one another here.”
“We have come to tell you
we love you very much,” Cardinal Dolan said. “We know of your
suffering. And we can never forget you.”
In an April 11 Mass in a camp for
the displaced in Ankawa, on the outskirts of Irbil, the delegation got the same
message it heard the previous day.
“We feel very grateful for
this fraternal solidarity that you are showing. And we all do hope that you
will intervene with your government, with those who have a word to say on the
international scene, to be faithful to the principles on which your country was
founded. That includes the right of all people, every human being, to live in
freedom and dignity,” Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan said
in his homily.
“When we see that strong
nations like yours uphold the rights of those who have been uprooted, at that
time we will really live the hope of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.”
In an interview at the end of
the visit, Cardinal Dolan told Catholic News Service that the pastoral visit
would provoke renewed advocacy back home.
“We value the relationship
we have with our government, but we sometimes smile when outsiders think we
have a lot more clout than we really have. But that’s not going to stop us from
trying,” the cardinal said. “When we get back, Bishop Murphy and I
will brief our fellow bishops and the Holy See, and we will share with our
political leaders what we have seen and heard. We owe it to the people here
because they have asked us to do that.”
Cardinal Dolan acknowledged that
the church’s counsel was rejected in the lead up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of
Iraq, which many believe helped create the conditions from which Islamic State
emerged.
“Catholics in the United
States can at least be grateful that, more often than not, the church has been
on the right side when it comes to these issues,” Cardinal Dolan said. “Pope
St. John Paul II told our presidents, ‘This will be a road of no return, and
you will look back in future years and regret what you’re doing.'”
Bishop Murphy said the U.S.
bishops always spoke of the need for caution in the region.
“Maybe we were too cautious
with our cautionary words, and I think you could make a case for that, but
there are a lot of people who have strong opinions against what happened who
voted for it at the time. We never did,” he told CNS.
As they visited with the
displaced and the pastoral workers who accompany them, some of what the U.S.
church leaders saw and heard was not easy to experience. In an April 9 public
forum in a displaced camp in Ankawa, Amal Mare was one of several displaced
persons who offered testimony. She praised local Christians for welcoming her
family when they fled from Qaraqosh.
“Yet when are we going to
be able to leave? We are living here in misery, and we want to go back to
Qaraqosh,” she said, sobbing as Cardinal Dolan embraced her. “We miss
our churches. We are sons and daughters of the church. Here we created a church
in this hall, and every night for the last 18 months we have all prayed the
rosary here. But now we’re losing hope. How much longer will we have to wait?”
Meeting April 9 with a group of
students at the Chaldean Catholic St. Peter’s Seminary in Irbil, Cardinal Dolan
told the seminarians that they had good models of ministry from which to learn.
“Pope Francis keeps saying
that we priests must be with our people. We just came from a refugee camp where
we met a priest who slept outside on his mattress because he said he couldn’t
sleep inside if his people were outside. We’ve met with sisters and priests who
walked with the people from Mosul as they were fleeing. That’s the model of the
priesthood. That’s Jesus. To be with our people all the time, to be especially
close to your people in the difficult times,” the cardinal said.
Bishop Murphy told the
seminarians he was impressed by their faithfulness in the midst of violence and
terror.
“Although these are
difficult times, the church has always known difficult times. You lift me up.
It is the strength of your faith that has brought you here, and it is that
faith which gives me great hope for your future,” he said.
The head of the Chaldean
Catholic community in Kurdistan, which has provided a variety of services to
the displaced, praised the church leaders’ visit.
“It has been a visit of
solidarity, a visit of love, a visit of hope, where we can really feel that we
are not forgotten, that we’ve been in the prayers of His Eminence and the
bishops and the whole Christian community in America. It means a lot for us,”
Archbishop Bashar Warda of Irbil told Catholic News Service.
“And once we’re not
forgotten, we are sure they will make every possible effort to remind the
politicians, to remind everyone, that there are persecuted, vulnerable
communities in Iraq. They are Christians, Yezidis and others, and we have to do
something for them. We are brothers, and whenever a brother suffers or
experiences sadness, the family gets together, prays together, and works
together to overcome this.”
In addition to Cardinal Dolan
and Bishop Murphy, the delegation included Msgr. John Kozar, president of
CNEWA, and Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, executive director of Catholic Charities for
the Archdiocese of New York.
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