Author Topic: Prayers for an Intrepid Priest Missing in Syria  (Read 1191 times)

hubag bohol

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Prayers for an Intrepid Priest Missing in Syria
« on: August 02, 2013, 01:01:45 PM »
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
August 1, 2013, 7:58 p.m. ET
http://online.wsj.com/

He worked to bring faiths together in a land where that can be fatal.

By STEPHANIE SALDANA


On Wednesday, Pope Francis celebrated a Mass for the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order to which he belongs. The pope paused to remember those Jesuit priests who had given their lives in service of their faith. "I'm thinking of Padre Paolo," he said.

At the moment, no one in the room knew if Father Paolo Dall'Oglio was still alive.

Two days before the pope's prayer, Father Paolo, an Italian Jesuit priest associated with the Syrian opposition, had been seen walking the streets of Raqqa, a rebel-controlled area in northern Syria. Then he disappeared. Activists reported that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, a militant group affiliated with al Qaeda, had kidnapped him. Contradicting reports soon emerged. Had Father Paolo been kidnapped, or had he purposefully met with the group to negotiate the release of hostages and to broker a truce between Kurds and Islamic extremists fighting in the north?

One thing is certain: No one has heard from him since.

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hubag bohol

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Re: Prayers for an Intrepid Priest Missing in Syria
« Reply #1 on: August 02, 2013, 01:02:43 PM »


Father Paolo Dall'Oglio in 2012.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images


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hubag bohol

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Re: Prayers for an Intrepid Priest Missing in Syria
« Reply #2 on: August 02, 2013, 01:03:51 PM »
I have been a friend of Father Paolo's for more than a decade, and I spoke to him about his trip via Skype before he left. Earlier this summer, a priest named Father François Mourad was murdered in a monastery in northern Syria, and the danger to Christians was increasingly apparent. When we discussed why he was choosing to put himself in such danger, the reason he gave was as radical as it is simple. He was going out of love.

Father Paolo is no stranger to Syria. In 1982, as a young Catholic priest trained in Arabic, he traveled to the ruined sixth-century monastery of Deir Mar Musa in the Syrian desert, 50 miles north of Damascus, on a spiritual retreat. Shaken by the civil war in neighboring Lebanon, he decided to create a community of monks and nuns dedicated to prayer, hospitality and dialogue with Islam. He named the community at Deir Mar Musa "al-Khalil," the title given by God in the Quran to Abraham, the "friend of God" who welcomed the stranger.

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hubag bohol

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Re: Prayers for an Intrepid Priest Missing in Syria
« Reply #3 on: August 02, 2013, 01:04:36 PM »
By the time I met Father Paolo in 2000 at Deir Mar Musa, the religious community was welcoming tens of thousands of visitors a year, many of them Muslim. A bear of a man who speaks Italian, English, French and Arabic, and who quotes the Quran as easily as the gospels, Father Paolo greeted Muslims in the local dialect and invited them to share a meal, exemplifying the monastic tradition that every guest should be welcomed as Jesus himself.

Father Paolo fasted during Ramadan and taught that Christians should not simply tolerate Muslims, but love them. He was fond of saying: "You know, the Muslims have a saying, that no one can escape the power of God, and the power of God is his mercy."

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hubag bohol

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Re: Prayers for an Intrepid Priest Missing in Syria
« Reply #4 on: August 02, 2013, 01:05:14 PM »
Today, visitors to the monastery are rare. In August of last year, after it had been attacked at gunpoint three times in six months, the community asked that female guests no longer spend the night. After the Syrian uprising began in 2011, Father Paolo publicly criticized the regime of Bashar Assad. For some Christians, who as minorities received protection under the Alawite regime, Father Paolo's stance was a betrayal. Others—Christians and Muslims—saw him as a hero.

After attending the funeral of an opposition filmmaker in May 2012, Father Paolo was expelled by the Assad regime from the country that he had called home for three decades. "I am not leaving Syria," he told Vatican radio in June 2012. "This is just my corpse that is leaving Syria. I remain one hundred percent in Syria."

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Re: Prayers for an Intrepid Priest Missing in Syria
« Reply #5 on: August 02, 2013, 01:07:05 PM »
I spoke to Father Paolo last year shortly after his expulsion, when he was in Iraq. My father had died the week before we spoke. I gave my condolences on losing his country, and he consoled me about losing my father. He said: "I would never presume to take your father's place. But I would hope that, if I could, I might be something of a father to you."

It was that impulse—to take those abandoned as his own—that led him back to Syria. There, Muslims and Christians alike call him Abuna Paolo, a combination of his Arabic and Italian names. The title for a priest, it means "Our father, Paolo."

When we last spoke, he was preparing this latest illegal trip into Syria—one of several he had taken in the past few months into rebel-held areas. He told me he couldn't bear to remain in the safety of exile while others died.

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Re: Prayers for an Intrepid Priest Missing in Syria
« Reply #6 on: August 02, 2013, 01:07:35 PM »
I asked him not to take unnecessary risks. He responded: "I have been thinking of the words of the disciples to Jesus in the gospels before he died. 'Must you go to Jerusalem?' they asked. And the answer is yes—sometimes you must go to Jerusalem. You must go with your physical body in order to be there."

There are others like him. I think of a young Syrian nun I know who was living abroad and recently chose to return to Deir Mar Musa. She told me before she left: "I sometimes hope that I can contain the suffering of the entire world in my heart. And if I can do this—and continue to love—then maybe I can move the world towards love, too."

As for the rest of us: We watch as 100,000 die and millions become refugees, tempted to believe that it is not our problem. We do this at risk not only to Syria but also to our own humanity, for in the end, we decide whose concerns are ours. Father Paolo's dream—one that he might have given his life for—is that our circle of belonging might expand to include not only Christians and Muslims but everyone, until there is no one left standing outside it.

Ms. Saldana, a writer living in Jerusalem, is the author of "The Bread of Angels," (Doubleday, 2010.)


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Lorenzo

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Re: Prayers for an Intrepid Priest Missing in Syria
« Reply #7 on: August 02, 2013, 10:50:56 PM »
Lord,

Please keep under your protection our beloved priest, Fr. Paolo. May he be released, if it is according to your Will. This we ask and pray through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

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