Posted on 08/18/2015 3:11:33 PM PDT by NYer
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 US Department of State is adhering with all the rigidity of a Soviet era bureaucracy to the rule that only people at risk from massacres launched by the regime qualify for refugee status. The rapes of Christian women and the butchery of Christian children do not count.
Catholic ping!
Churches throw lifelines while Lord Foul and his minions throw boat anchors!
"The ship is sinking and all of us, the Lebanese, should stick together and work together to stop the Israeli aggression," Amin Gemayel, a Maronite Christian who served as president from 1982 to 1988, told the Arabic-language TV station Al-Jazeera . . . Michel Aoun, a one-time commander in Lebanon's 15-year civil war who now serves in parliament, said . . . "I don't think that Israel has the capability to destroy Hezbollah militarily because Hezbollah is not a group of armed men," Aoun said. "Hezbollah is a major part of the Lebanese social fabric."
Lebanon Turns to the Vatican to Halt Israeli Offensive
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1668754/posts
Vatican Condemns Israel for Attacks on Lebanon
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1665678/posts
On the Syrian-Lebanese-Iranian alliance.
Lebanon Is NOT Innocent (David Horowitz Slams The Lebanon “Innocent Bystander” Myth Alert)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1671142/posts
Those Christians and the persecution they are experiencing are weighing heavily on my spirit.
Pray for them.
Don’t worry, bh0 will forbid these Christian refugees as he brings in more Moslems. (sarcams)
But read this article I was told about.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/08/growing-chorus-across-u-s-no-more-refugees/
Christians are not reliable tools for the world wide guilt ridden left. The middle east Christians who have settled in places like Sweden are the only successful and integrated immigrants that lean toward conservatism. The leftists would rather see them dead than upsetting the rape stats in Malmo.
America won’t bring in Christian refugees, but we are bringing in thousands of Muslims.
Churches in the West Trying to Throw Lifeline to Iraqi and Syrian Christians
""America won’t bring in Christian refugees, but we are bringing in thousands of Muslims.""
Article and # 4.
Interesting...
Wanted to make sure you saw post 4
America OBAMA won’t bring in Christian refugees, but we are HE is bringing in thousands of Muslims.
EVERYTHING obama does either:
a) Weakens America/AmericansThere are NO counter examples.
b) Distances America's allies
c) Strengthens America's enemies
d) Attacks Christianity
e) Serves Islam
f) Harms Israel
Or some combination of the above.
Your correction at post #13 is correct. Thank you.
Serves Russia should be near the top of the list.
It’s a), b), and c)...
But Russia is key to the Obama/Putin New World Order agenda. It should be mentioned specifically.
Russian isn’t critical to obama’s goal of ummah.
If this covert muslim single handedly brings down “The Great Satan”, his praises will be sung in mosques for millennia.
What better write-up, how much more glory could any human hope for?
Obama has no true religious faith, of any kind. He’s a communist. That “Liberation Theology” “church” he attended for 20+ years is part of a communist-concocted church movement which goes back to the 1960s. The only reason communists like him embrace the islamo-nazis is because they share a common enemy in us, and in Israel. Russia seeks to regain the glory they lost when the Soviet Union split. With Obama’s hot and eager help in setting the stage, they are in an excellent position to do so. They and the ChiComs are more closely allied than ever. Both are out to form a new world order, where they are both much stronger and we are much weaker. They and Obama are on the same exact page. This has nothing whatsoever to do with religion, particularly Obama’s, since he doesn’t even have one, other than Marxism.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HI29Ag01.html
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"Joint war games are a logical outcome of the Sino-Russian Friendship and Cooperation Treaty signed in 2001, and reflect the shared worldview and growing economic ties between the two Eastern Hemisphere giants."
http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2005/09/war-games-russia-china-grow-alliance
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170287,00.html
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Sept 11, 2014
China and Russia to build major seaport: report
China and Russia will build one of the largest ports in north-east Asia on Russia’s Sea of Japan coast, reports say, in a further sign of the powerhouses’ growing alliance.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-11/china-and-russia-to-build-major-seaport-report/5738036
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