Letter from Aleppo: ‘He was just 13 years-old’
By Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart
He was just 13, our
poor Fouad Banna, this child whom we just buried—leaders of the Christian
community, his sister Rosy, his close family members and myself. His two
parents, both also gravely wounded, were not present at his sorrowful funeral
ceremony, for they themselves are caught between life and death in intensive
care.
The three of them were
in their apartment Feb. 14, in the evening, when the building collapsed after
being struck by one of the many rockets fired from the rebel side into our
Christian quarter in the city of Aleppo. Of his immediate family the only one
present at his funeral was poor Rosy, his sister, a young student aged 17. When
I asked her if there was anything I could do to help her, the only thing she
said to me was, “Father, I beg you, ask the Lord to heal my two parents.”
Rosy has been left
terribly alone. She is in mourning, together with many other Christians. They have
been devastated following this fresh tragedy that has befallen our innocent
families in this city, ravaged by the continuing and savage bombardments by the
jihadists who, after having destroyed everything we have, are now daily
terrorizing the population and doing everything they can to prevent our people,
who are innocent and peaceful, from simply living in their own homes—even to
the extent of trying to wipe them out if they stay on in the country.
There were five people
in the Christian quarter who were slaughtered along with Fouad that day. How
much suffering and unhappiness they have subjected us to, for more than four
years now, these brutal and pitiless assailants! They want to rule the world
and claim to be obeying God in their attempts to impose, by force and violence,
their outdated way of life and their archaic laws on every human being in the
world. “Are you still there?” My friends ask me: “What are you waiting for to
leave?”
The reason we are
holding out, we Christians, despite everything that happens to us, is deeply
rooted in the history of our Church, which is that of the earliest Christians.
We have been here in Syria ever since the return of our brethren from
Jerusalem, right from the earliest days. They had been baptized by the apostles
themselves, as we are told in the Acts of the Apostles. We owe our origins to
those Jews of the Diaspora who regularly made their traditional pilgrimage to
Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost each year.
Paul was baptized,
confirmed, ordained to the priesthood and sent out to preach the good news to
the world by our forefathers in Damascus. The Christians who are suffering here
today are the descendants of Christian believers who have remained faithful to
Christ for 2000 years and who had the courage to pay with their lives for their
unwavering fidelity to the Church of the Word Incarnate.
Archbishop Jeanbart is the Melkite Metropolitan
of Aleppo, Syria. He sent this letter to Aid to the Church in Need.
The funeral of Fouad Banna; photo
courtesy Melkite Archdiocese of Aleppo, Syria.
Editor’s Notes:
Directly under the
Holy Father, Aid to the Church in Need supports
the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need.
ACN is a Catholic charity - helping to bring Christ to the world through
prayer, information and action.
Founded in 1947 by Father Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul
II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity,” the organization is now at work
in over 145 countries throughout the world.
The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including
providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church
buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since
the initiative’s launch in 1979, 43 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed
worldwide.
For more information contact Michael Varenne at
michael@churchinneed.org or call
718-609-0939 or fax718-609-0938. Aid to the Church in Need, 725 Leonard Street,
PO Box 220384, Brooklyn, NY 11222-0384. www.churchinneed.org
