Matt Hadro
Christians around the world have been models of forgiveness amidst
persecution, but Western Christians must support them, religious leaders
insisted at a world summit last week.
“We cannot rest, we cannot
be content, we certainly can’t be complacent knowing our sisters and
brothers are being oppressed, imprisoned, and killed,” Cardinal Donald
Wuerl of Washington, D.C. stated in his May 12 keynote address at the
World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians.
“When fellow
Christians suffer, we suffer too. Injustice, this extraordinary
injustice, should arouse in us the need to speak,” he continued.
Last
week’s D.C. summit, hosted by the Billy Graham Evangelistic
Association, featured more than 600 Christian leaders from 130
countries, including those who have suffered persecution in countries
like Syria, North Korea, Iraq, Egypt, and Cuba.
The gathering
was meant to shed light on narratives of Christian persecution amidst
totalitarianism, secularism, tribalism, or religious extremism, and
enable leaders to collaborate on pushing for religious freedom and
tolerance.
Vice President Mike Pence addressed the summit on
Thursday, as well as Metropolitan Hilarion of the Russian Orthodox
Church. Cardinal Wuerl delivered the keynote address on Friday.
Catholic
and Orthodox leaders at the summit emphasized that Christians play a
vital role as religious minorities in African and Asian countries,
acting as peacemakers and bridge-builders in societies fraught with
sectarian strife.
Fr. Douglas al-Bazi, a Chaldean Catholic
priest who was kidnapped and tortured for several days in 2006 by
terrorists in Iraq, spoke to EWTN News about the continued Christian
witness of forgiveness there, despite the mass displacement of
communities at the hands of the Islamic State and the betrayal by their
neighbors.
Christians are unique in the sense that they are the
only group that is practicing widespread forgiveness, Fr. Bazi said.
“Because even (with) what’s happened to us, we are still believing in
the future, we are still believing in life, we are still looking forward
to live together again.”
Fr. Bazi is now serving in New Zealand,
thousands of miles from his former parish in Erbil, Iraq where he
ministered to Christian refugees of ISIS. He runs Project 52, which
helps disabled children in Iraq with the goal of having them adopted by
families in New Zealand.
“My body is in New Zealand, but my heart is still in Iraq,” he said.
When
ISIS overran large parts of Northern Iraq in 2014, Christians were
given an ultimatum to convert to Islam, leave, or die, and many fled
eastward to Erbil.
Now, after ISIS forces have been driven back
from the Nineveh Plan and most of Mosul, many refugees have returned to
see their homes damaged or destroyed, and their furniture stolen.
One
family spent a night in their home but were kept awake by their
neighbor yelling that they were infidels, Fr. Bazi said. “No ISIS
anymore, but still the mentality of terrorists…the radical way,” he
said.
“So my people, again and again, they are between two fires, to live in camps, or to go back again to hell, I mean Mosul.”
As
Christians move back into their homes there, “the trust between people,
actually, is completely lost,” he admitted. Yet Christians will
forgive, and in time the relationships may be mended.
It is
imperative that the Christians who can stay in Iraq do so, he
maintained, as they will serve as a necessary “bridge” between
minorities. “(If) we don’t have Christians, we don’t have examples of
forgiveness in Iraq,” he said.
Meanwhile, in Syria, Christians
are caught in the middle of a proxy war that has raged since 2011 with
no immediate end in sight. They co-existed with Muslim neighbors for
centuries, but that balance stands to be upset as refugees are forced to
flee their homes for elsewhere within Syria or to other countries.
Patriarch
Ignatius Aphrem II of the Syriac Orthodox Church told EWTN News of how
the Church there helps those in need, the majority of whom are Muslims.
“We
do that, not only because it’s our mission, it’s our faith that teaches
us to help everyone,” he insisted, “but also because we want to invest
in our future with these people, these our neighbors, our countrymen,
women, and our future is together.”
Fr. Alexi Chehadeh,
director-general of ecumenical relations and development for the Greek
Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, rejected the idea of
dividing Syria into Alawite, Sunni Muslim, and Christian sections.
“We
are against this,” he said. “We want a unified Syria under one flag,”
adding that he wished “that Muslims and Christians are living together
in peace and harmony.”
However, not all Christians around the
world are setting an example of neighborliness, tolerance, and
forgiveness. “Some of the conflict involving Christian groups and some
of the persecution is coming from Christians,” Dr. Timothy Shah told
EWTN News.
Shah is the director for international research of
the Religious Freedom Research Project at Georgetown University’s
Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.
He pointed to examples of Christians persecuting other Christians in Russia, Mexico, Latin America, Sri Lanka, and Ukraine.
In
Mexico, for instance, Protestant families have been driven from their
villages for their beliefs. “You’re talking about people whose lives are
drastically affected,” Shah said. “This simply should not be happening
in an era where the Holy Father talks about the ecumenism of blood.”
In
Russia, the Supreme Court just outlawed Jehovah’s Witnesses from
publicly practicing their faith. In Sri Lanka, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith
of Colombo has backed “laws restricting conversion,” he said.
Through
his rhetoric, the cardinal “is not, let’s be candid, practicing, I
think, the kind of spirit of brotherhood with non-Catholic Christians
that I think the Holy Father has himself clearly embodied, both when he
was archbishop in Argentina and also as Pope,” Shah continued.
Yet
there is also a palpable “sense of hope that Christians really can
respond effectively” to persecution, he said, citing the
recently-released report “Under Caesar’s Sword” which documents how
Christians around the world have decided to respond to persecution, many
times through non-violence, dialogue, and forgiveness.
Despite
the witness to charity of fellow Christians in Africa, the Middle East,
and Asia, the Western Church must do much more to help them through
prayer, charitable giving, and advocacy, speakers at the summit
insisted.
Cardinal Wuerl compared the duties of Christians in
the West to help their persecuted brethren to Simon of Cyrene who helped
Jesus to carry his cross.
“Just as Simon of Cyrene stepped
forward to help Jesus carry his cross, and for that reason has forever
been indelibly imprinted in the iconography of the Christian world, so
my brothers and sisters do we have to find ways of stepping forward,” he
stated in his Friday keynote address at the summit.
“Life has
not greatly improved” for Christians living in the shadow of ISIS, he
maintained, as many of the displaced are still homeless and dependent on
aid groups for their basic needs.
“Together, alone,
individually, collectively, whenever the opportunity presents itself,
and even when it is inconvenient, we must lift up our hearts in prayer,
our hands in help, and raise our voices in witness,” he said.
In
Iraq, for Christians to have a future they must be considered equal
citizens under the law, Fr. Bazi explained, and Western Christians can
help by pushing for the overturning of Article 2 of the Iraqi
constitution, which declares that “Islam is the official religion of the
State” and that “no law that contradicts the established provisions of
Islam may be established.”
The article states that the
constitution “guarantees” freedom of religion, but Fr. Bazi said that
since it prohibits any laws contradicting Islam, Sharia law largely
applies in practice, and there is no religious freedom.
He hoped
the Trump administration could press Iraq to change that article, and
that Pope Francis and President Trump will discuss the future of
Christians in the Middle East in their upcoming meeting on May 24 at the
Vatican.
In Syria, the international community must help
provide more aid to those displaced by the conflict as they cannot yet
return to their homes and “the churches are overwhelmed with the
services they are offering,” Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II told EWTN
News.
But there also must be a lasting end to the conflict
through an end to the arms trade and the international community coming
together on a peace agreement, he said. Otherwise people will not be
able to return to their homes.
“In Syria, particularly, the
Russians and the Americans are flexing their muscles there, the Iranians
and the Saudis are fighting there,” he said, and Israel and other
countries have an interest in the outcome of the conflict. “Unless all
these groups come together,” he said, “and agree on a plan, I don’t
think peace will be restored.”
Furthermore, groups like ISIS sell
oil from Syria and Iraq to Turkish companies and other third parties,
including Europeans, and this must stop, he insisted.
As a world
leader, the U.S. has a key role in fighting religious persecution
around the world, former congressman Frank Wolf told EWTN News, but in
the “past several years” international religious freedom has been “kind
of ignored” by members of both parties in Congress.
The Trump
administration must make some key hires to ensure that religious freedom
has a prominent place in American diplomacy and foreign policy, he
said, including the appointment of an Ambassador at-Large for
International Religious Freedom.
The previous ambassador, Rabbi
David Saperstein, who served during President Obama’s second term, was a
“model” for this position, he said, and the next ambassador must have
direct access to the Secretary of State and the President, when
necessary.
A new law, the Frank R. Wolf International Religious
Freedom Act, which expands upon the previous 1998 law, mandates
religious freedom training for foreign service officers. This will be
key for embassies to be seen as “islands of freedom” as they were
traditionally viewed during the Cold War, especially in Soviet bloc
countries, Wolf explained.
If the training is put into practice,
and members of Congress have access to a Prisoners of Conscience List,
they can have information on persons detained by foreign governments for
their religious beliefs and can request to visit these prisoners when
they travel abroad.
Asked about the lack of advocacy for
persecuted Christians worldwide, Wolf was blunt: “I think the church in
the West has failed.”
