Sister Diana Momeka encounters stories like this on a daily basis. A mother came to her the other day, desperate for answers. She couldn’t get her four-year-old son to eat. He couldn’t sleep at night. His bones ached constantly. And the medicine he was taking was no help.
In ways, the boy is a metaphor for the larger Christian community in Iraq—100,000-plus souls still wondering what will happen to them, more than a year after an Islamist movement forced them from Mosul and the Nineveh Plain. Once industrious, hard-working, proud homeowners, the sons and daughters of a millennia-old Christian tradition scrape by, living in trailer-like facilities or unfinished buildings in the Kurdish capital of northern Iraq. The temporary housing, set up in sprawling camps around Erbil, let in no sunlight and can be roasting in the summer and frigid in winter. The internally displaced persons have very little privacy and often get little sleep.
With a spike in childhood illnesses last year, Sister Diana was inspired to seek the aid of a local priest, and both of them recruited doctors and nurses. They eventually established clinics that could make at least a dent in a growing public health problem.
Meanwhile, almost 400 miles to the west, the Greek Melkite Archbishop of Aleppo, Syria, returned from a visit to the United States to find a flock still shaking in fear. Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart’s once proud city lay largely in ruins, and clashes between the Islamic State group, the al-Nusra Front, other rebel groups and the military of Bashar al-Assad’s regime hover perilously close. In fact, the archbishop said in an interview Friday, the Christian neighborhood had suffered a bombing just two days before his return, leaving seven people dead.
Four years after the outbreak of civil war, with no real hope of a solution, a plan Archbishop Jeanbart proposes seems almost ludicrous. He calls it "Build to Stay," and he expects that it will provide enough motivation to keep distraught Syrian Christians from emigrating. It is, he says, a "movement that has the goal to gather together a great number of faithful who are convinced of the importance of our presence in this country."
Groups like the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic Near East Welfare Association and Aid to the Church in Need, side with people like Archbishop Jeanbart, as hopeless as the situation may appear. The Knights’ Christian Refugee Relief Fund has delivered more than $3 million in humanitarian aid to persecuted Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East and has kicked off a public education campaign about the crisis. Assistance from the Knights of Columbus has included permanent housing for those who have had to flee their homes, as well as support for medical facilities in areas flooded with Christians and other refugees.
“We have seen people killed, slaughtered, women violated, priests and bishops kidnapped, houses destroyed, churches and convents invaded,” said Archbishop Jeanbart at the Knights’ convention in Philadelphia earlier this month. “But we persist with the help of God and with the help of those who help us, like the Knights of Columbus.”
"I have just begun to work with the Knights, and we have good reasons to think that they will be helpful in our main project, Build to Stay, which will be significant in the support of the Christians willing to continue the presence of the Church in Syria," the archbishop told Aleteia. The Catholic men’s fraternal organization has provided the Eparchy of Aleppo $350,000.
Catholic Near East Welfare Association, an agency of the Holy See founded in 1926, has disbursed more than $7.2 million to assist displaced Iraqis and Syrians. The funds have enabled CNEWA’s on-the-ground partners, the local churches, to respond to needs, including food staples, medical supplies, and bedding. The aid has also helped set up and equip clinics, such as Sister Diana’s, and provide counseling and tutoring.
The international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need also recently announced a new aid package worth approximately $4 million for Iraq’s Christian community. Money will go toward providing food for at least 13,000 families and housing for clergy. ACN will also continue to provide significant amounts of aid to Christian refugees in Lebanon and Syria, in particular humanitarian supplies for Melkite and Syrian-Catholic families in the city of Homs.
"Without the help of the benefactors and organizations that have been supporting us, we would not be able to run the clinic at all," said Sister Diana in an interview.
She spoke of the virtue of hope as something like a flickering candle, burning down to its end.
"It’s been a year, and we’ve been working [at the clinic] like machines day and night, accompanying our people," she said. "But it feels like we’re numb, like we don’t know if this is real or a nightmare, and after one year, we are waking up from our nightmare and we have to face what we are looking at now: people are losing their hope. They tried to keep their faith up and we tried to help them, but after one year…."
Her voice trailed off. The nun pointed out that Christians forced out of their homelands have lost everything except their dignity, but now even that is at stake.
"Now they are trying to figure out how to provide for their families and not have to depend on humanitarian aid for the rest of their lives," she said. "People are getting desperate and wondering what’s next. And we still feel abandoned by the world."
Sister Diana traveled to the United States earlier this year to help raise awareness of the plight of Iraq’s Christians. One of her stops was at the U.S. Congress, where she testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
"When I returned after testifying before Congress people were waiting for a message, asking me ‘Sister, what happened?’ To tell you the truth I couldn’t tell them anything because, you know, people want to see some changes," she said. "There’s no action. We feel we need action. Words are fine, prayers are good. But what can we do to help people to keep their faith?"
John Burger is news editor for Aleteia’s English edition.
And today we celebrate...