Iraqi seminarists: a "miracle"

By Baghdadhope

They arrived to Monaco of Bavaria on the 23 of August after a long tour in Europe with a Czechoslovakian visa and the blessing and support of the Chaldean Patriarch, Cardinal Mar Emmanuel III Delly.

20 students of the major Chaldean seminary of Mar Shimoun (San Pietro) in Erbil, accompanied by three priests, the rector and vice rector of the seminary, Father Bashar Warda and Father Fadi Lion, and Father Nadheer Dakko, at the beginning of August left Iraq for Prague from where they traveled to Rome where they could visit the places of Christianity and enjoy a beautiful and less chaotic than usual city from where they went to visit Assisi.

An important journey important for students who not only had never been in Italy but had never even left Iraq. A journey that will be remembered in the history of the Chaldean seminar also because this is the first time that students spend a period abroad together. Until this year, in fact, and since the institution was transferred from Baghdad to Erbil for security reasons, during the Christmas and Easter time, and during the hot summer months, students used to go to the villages in the north of the country and in other cities to bring comfort to Christians and start putting into practice the lessons that will accompany them in their choice of priestly life. In June it seemed that the journey could jump. According to some rumours the group would instead travelled to Australia for WYD, but the difficulties in obtaining visas for Sydney guided the choice to Europe.

After a period in Rome the seminarists and the priests, except for Father Bashar Warda already returned to Iraq, arrived in Monaco where they were welcomed by the city Chaldean priest, Father Peter Patto, and by Father Douglas Al Bazi, and on Sunday afternoon, in Mariahilfkirche was celebrated a mass that saw them all protagonists. To officiate the celebration were Father Peter Patto and Father Fadi Lion, accompanied by the Iraqis Fr. Nadheer Dakko, Fr.Marcus Marogi, and Fr. Douglas Al Bazi, and by a German priest in charge of the Christian Arabic-speaking communities that do not have, such as Chaldean, a resident priest of reference.
The seminarists were entrusted with the no less important task to accompany the rite with the liturgical hymns that moved the approximately 300 faithful gathered for the occasion by Monaco and other German cities. The Mass, sang in Aramaic and Arabic, began with the welcome speech by Father Peter Patto who stressed the exceptional nature of the event and the fortune for the community to meet the seminarists and to pray for their priestly path. A path that Father Fadi Lion did not hesitate to define in his homily a “miracle” considering the difficult times that the Iraqi Christian community is experiencing.

The solemn atmosphere of the Mass was followed by that of a happy party gladdened by Iraqi food prepared in abundance by the ladies of the community. Thus, among courses of briani, dolma and kubba, the Chaldean community in Germany met its future priests exchanging with them news and memories, as that former catechism teacher who, at home, had had among his students one of the priests and a seminarist who still remembered his paternal rebukes, or that affected woman who recognized in one of the seminarists the son of a friend with whom she had spent her youth.

"You need faith and courage to decide to become a priest in Iraq in these days," said to Baghdadhope Father Douglas Al Bazi who added to be "proud" of young seminarists. And there is no doubt that he knows what he talks about. He who was kidnapped and released after 11 days of imprisonment, who still bears in a leg a splinter as the result of a shooting, who ran the risk of dying when a bomb was left near the boundary wall of his church in Baghdad.

He who lived and lives as a priest in the hardest years of the recent history of his country.