ONE Magazine Autumn 2013

one

Autumn 2013

God • World • Human Family • Church

Feeding Ethiopia’s Children Under Fire in Egypt Mission of Mercy in Jordan A Journey Through Christian’s World

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COVER STORY

Christian’s World A pictorial journey photographs by Christian Molidor, R.S.M.

FEATURES

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Overwhelming Mercy Catholic health care initiatives in Jordan confront crisis

by Nicholas Seeley

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Staying Power Georgia’s Armenian Catholics retain identity and faith text and photographs by Molly Corso

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Faith Under Fire Young Copts persevere in Egypt

by Sarah Topol

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Hungry to Learn Feeding hungry children in Ethiopia

by Don Duncan with photographs by Petterik Wiggers

DEPARTMENTS

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Connections to the world of CNEWA People from the world of CNEWA

by Nicholas Seeley Focus on the world of CNEWA

by John E. Kozar

t In the highlands of Tigray, Ethiopia, the soil has suffered severe erosion, leading to low agricultural yields.

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Volume 39 NUMBER 3

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38 Front: In this 2000 photo, a girl in Atata, Ethiopia, strikes a “camera-shy” pose.

Back: While most of Zerqa’s residents are refugees, the composition of this population has shifted considerably over the years, at times including people displaced from Bangladesh, Chechnya, Iraq, Pakistan, Palestine and Syria.

Photo Credits Front cover and back cover, pages 24-29, Sister Christian Molidor, R.S.M.; pages 2, 30-31, 33-35, Petterik Wiggers/Panos Pictures; pages 4 (top), 38, John E. Kozar; page 4 (bottom), CNEWA; pages 6 and 9 (inset), Steve Sabella; pages 7-8, 11, Nader Daoud; page 9, 18-19, CNS photo/ Reuters; pages 12-15, Molly Corso; page 17, Armineh Johannes; pages 20-21, CNS photo/ Mohamed Abd El-Ghany, Reuters; page 21 (upper right), CNS photo/Ammar Awad, Reuters; page 22-23, David Degner/Getty Images; page 36, Philip Toscano-Heighton.

ONE is published quarterly. ISSN: 1552-2016 Publisher Msgr. John E. Kozar

30 Editorial Staff Paul Grillo Annie Grunow Deacon Greg Kandra Michael J.L. La Civita Elias Mallon, S.A., Ph.D. J.D. Conor Mauro CNEWA Founded by the Holy Father, CNEWA shares the love of Christ with the churches and peoples of the East. CNEWA works for, through and with the Eastern Catholic churches to identify needs and implement reasonable solutions.

CNEWA connects you to your brothers and sisters in need. Together, we build up the church, affirm human dignity, alleviate poverty, encourage dialogue — and inspire hope.

Officers Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Chair and Treasurer Msgr. John E. Kozar, Secretary Editorial Office 1011 First Avenue, New York, NY 10022-4195 1-212-826-1480 www.cnewa.org ©2013 Catholic Near East Welfare Association.

All rights reserved. Member of the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada.

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connections

to the world of CNEWA CNEWA charitable giving advisor Megan Knighton recently paid a visit to an extraordinary donor in Arizona.

Happy Birthday!

“I was privileged to spend one morning with one of the most loyal members of our CNEWA family, Mrs. Cecilia Mazzoni,” Ms. Knighton wrote. “Mrs. Mazzoni just turned 101 in August and has been contributing to CNEWA for over 65 years. Talk about commitment to the poor! I asked her why she gives and she says because ‘that’s what Jesus would want.’”

In September, Christians in India marked the 83rd birthday of the SyroMalankara Catholic Church with a rally in Kerala. It was on 20 September 1930 that a long-cherished dream of a small group of Malankara Orthodox Christians, led by the visionary Mar Ivanios, were received into full communion with the Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI. See our profile on the church at WWW.CNEWA.ORG/WEB/SYROMALANKARA

CNEWA Canada at the Ukrainian Congress In June, Canadian representatives of CNEWA attended a gathering in Saskatoon that brought together more than 200 delegates from the Ukrainian Catholic Brotherhood of Canada and the Ukrainian Catholic Women’s League of Canada. These two lay organizations have played a crucial role within the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Canada, contributing to the vitality of parish life and promoting the rich Ukrainian cultural and spiritual heritage among Canadians.

Antin Sloboda, from CNEWA’s Ottawa office, gave a presentation on the agency’s work globally and updated delegates on the agency’s current programs in Ukraine.

Since CNEWA Canada opened in 2005, there have been many

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encounters and collaborations between CNEWA and the Ukrainian Canadian community.

To learn more about CNEWA’s w or k in U k r ain e , p le as e v is it WWW.CNEWA.CA/WEB/ UKRAINEDONATE A Donor Turns 101

Mrs. Mazzoni grew up poor herself, but said her parents always shared what they had with those who had less. This kind of generosity stayed with her — and it had a profound impact on CNEWA. Her parents were among the agency’s original supporters.

Their membership card from 1926, the year CNEWA was founded by Pope Pius XI, is safely preserved in the agency’s archives.

Mrs. Mazzoni and her late h u s b an d , F r an k , s up p ort e d numerous clean water and food projects in Ethiopia and India, as well as dozens of children, novices and seminarians over the years.

When her sister died unexpectedly, the Mazzoni family built a church in India in her memory.

“We are proud and grateful for the way she is making a difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters in need,” Ms. Knighton said. “She is a true inspiration! Thank you, Mrs. Mazzoni.”

Hundreds Attend Jordan Bible Camp CN E WA’ s o f fice in A m m a n sponsored its summer Bible camp at St. Joseph School in Zerqa. The annual camp, coordinated by the

OUR WEBSITE onemagazinehome.org OUR BLOG cnewablog.org Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, hosted Jordanian, Iraqi and Syrian children between the ages of 6 and 17 for one week. About 300 participants, mostly from low-income families, took part under the care of some 40 group leaders.

This year, activities fit the theme of “the Year of Faith,” including lessons from Scripture, songs, prayers and hymns.

The camp was founded t o strengthen the Christian faith of children through spiritual activities, liturgies, games, sports and more.

Helping Armenian Syrian Refugees In August, CNEWA launched a program in conjunction with t h e Ho war d Karagheusian Commemorative Corporation to help Armenian Syrian refugee families.

“Syrian refugees now living in L ebanon have pr ofound humanitarian needs that are not being met,” writes CNEWA’s Issam Bishara, regional director for Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. “In addition to supplying food, daily personal necessities, fuel and winter packages, we felt the need to respond to the educational, psychological and medical needs of Syria’s Armenians seeking relief from war.”

CNEWA — in partnership with Armenian Apostolic, Catholic and E vang el i cal churches — is providing students with classes to help them better adapt to the Lebanese education system and offering support and training for displaced women. The same project now extends to three other locations with partners in the Bekaa Valley and Mount Lebanon.

An Extraordinary Gift In September, the CNEWA family was moved when we received a generous donation from the Monastery of Poor Clares in Cleveland, Ohio — a community of sisters who live in great simplicity and poverty, adhering to the humble values of St. Clare and St. Francis.

“In addition to our daily prayers and sacrifices for our sisters and brothers in Syria, we are sending you the enclosed check to help alleviate their needs,” wrote the abbess. “It may be the largest check our community has ever written, but we know the need is so great and their lives so full of suffering that we want to share what the Lord has given us. We have several Syrian friends, both Christian and Muslim, whose families had their homes in Homs and Damascus. We feel very close to all people of Syria.”

The letter concluded: “We pray for you and all at CNEWA, asking God to be with you and assist you in the good work you are doing. And we beg your prayers for our community in return.”

Our prayers are with these generous sisters, in deep gratitude and great joy. May God continue to bless their prayerful lives.

What Donors Should Know Periodically, CNEWA receives inquiries about how donations are used. In October, Bob Pape, who directs our efforts for major gifts, described in a blog post how we follow “four fundamental points,” outlining how CNEWA keeps donors informed. For full details, you can read the post at WWW. CNEWABLOG.ORG/WEB/ WHENYOUGIVE Msgr. Kozar on the Holy Land In late September, CNEWA president Msgr. John E. Kozar was the featured speaker at the annual investiture ceremonies of the Northwestern Lieutenancy of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre in Seattle, Washington.

Continuing CNEWA’s commitment to the ongoing formation of the knights and ladies of the ancient order, Msgr. Kozar updated members of the order on key d e v e lo p m e n ts in th e r e g i on, spotlighting the church’s apostolic and charitable work.

Only on the Web

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There’s more to discover about CNEWA’s world online: • Lebanon conference focuses on Christians in Syria • The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church welcomes a new auxiliary bishop • Exclusive video: A look at the cathedral consecrated in Ukraine.

THESE AND MUCH MORE CAN BE FOUND AT WWW.CNEWA.ORG

FOR DAILY UPDATES, CHECK OUT CNEWA’S BLOG, ONE-TO-ONE AT CNEWABLOG.ORG

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Overwhelming

Mercy Catholic health care initiatives in Jordan confront crisis

by Nicholas Seeley

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B

y the middle of the morning, the Mother of Mercy Clinic is already crowded. Built on the grounds of Zerqa’s Latin parish of St. Pius X, the clinic has little by way of a waiting area. Benches and chairs, packed with women in Muslim headscarves, line the clinic’s narrow, winding corridors. A few women wear niqabs, the head covering popular in some Arab countries. Some carry infants. And always the clinic is at capacity.

“It is not possible to receive any patients who come after 9:30,” explains Sister Najma, the clinic’s administrator and a member of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena, a religious community based in Iraq. “We already have the number we can see.”

Yet the atmosphere remains calm, peaceful. At the front desk, the staff interviews new arrivals, pulling colorful folders containing patient files from the carefully ordered shelves behind the desk.

The clinic has served the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan for more than 30 years. In that time, it has built up an impressive reputation.

“The most important thing is cooperation,” Sister Najma says.

“Patients now are used to us, and that’s what encourages them the most. It’s very sweet. The reception, how we talk, how we treat them — it’s not like other clinics. We are like a f ami l y. Th a t’s w hy t hey’r e comfortable coming back.”

Run by the sisters and funded by CNEWA, the clinic offers a range of services to Jordan’s needy. While the staff treats injuries and common ailments, it focuses on prenatal and maternity care — a major demand in a country with a young and growing population. With only two doctors, two laboratory technicians and a handful of nurses and staff, Mother of Mercy manages to see between 100 and 130 patients a day. Patients of all creeds and ethnicities come from Zerqa — a

sprawling, poverty-ridden city populated mainly by Jordanians of Palestinian ancestry — and from the impoverished industrial areas that surround it. They also travel from more distant northern cities, such as Mafraq, Jerash and Irbid.

They are drawn by the clinic’s reputation for treating patients with respect, and by the affordable cost of its care.

“Some groups or families, they come here and they don’t pay, because they’re poor. Sometimes we just charge them small amounts of money,” says Sister Najma.

“There are a lot of poor people in Zerqa. There are poor immigrants, some of whom are from Bangladesh, and some from Egypt. Egyptian workers come as well,” she adds.

As with other Catholic health care facilities in Jordan, Mother of Mercy charges patients on a sliding scale, offering free service to those most in need, says Ra’ed Bahou, CNEWA’s regional director for Jordan and Iraq. But even its base fees are much lower than Jordan’s burdened state-run hospitals.

p Sister Najma chats with a patient visiting the clinic for a routine checkup. t The Mother of Mercy Clinic provides a wide range of services to as many as 30,000 patients each year, with a special focus on prenatal and postnatal care.

Right now, the demand for affordable care in Jordan is enormous.

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ordan is on the brink of a health care crisis. The tiny k in g d o m ’ s ag in g h ea l t h infrastructure has long been in need of an overhaul, but recent events in the region have exacerbated an already-difficult situation. The economic boom that Jordan experienced after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 has come to a grinding halt. Capital and investment have fled, and jobs are scarce.

Economic stress tends to cause people to fall back on public health care services, but the government has been facing a budget crisis of massive proportions. Rounds of

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Support the mission of mercy in Jordan

www.cnewa.org austerity measures have increased the price of fuel and basic goods, pounding hard an already weary population. Exacerbating matters, in the past decade Jordan has absorbed massive waves of new refugees — first from Iraq and now Syria.

Since early 2011, more than half a million Syrians have found refuge in a country with a population of barely more than six million.

Hundreds of people arrive every day, many of whom come with severe injuries, long-term health issues or both. Many women arrive pregnant — some of whom, married off at a young age, are barely more than children themselves.

Early in the crisis, the kingdom offered all Syrian refugees free health care in the public system.

But as the demand for care grew, it came close to bringing the system to its knees. In March, Dr. Yaroub Ajlouni, president of the Jordan Health Aid Society, reported that

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the health system in northern Jordan — where many Syrian refugees live — was on the verge of collapse. Beds were unavailable in the public hospitals, intensive care unit spaces and incubators were full, drugs in short supply. Since then, Dr. Ajlouni and other aid workers say the kingdom has relieved some of the crowding, quietly scaling back the amount of health care refugees can access, implementing new restrictions and asking international organizations to carry more of the burden. The crisis has affected everyone.

Sister Najma says the Mother of Mercy Clinic sees few refugees — perhaps 10 or 15 a day — but demand for its services is constantly growing, and the clinic is struggling to keep up with the increase. Part of this is because space is limited, Mr. Bahou explains, and part of it is that the same economic factors squeezing Jordanians are also putting pressure on private health care providers.

“It’s getting tight, because we can n o t in cr e as e th e b u d g e t anymore,” says Mr. Bahou. “We’re trying to keep the budget as it is and absorb the higher cost of maintenance and utilities.

“We have many generous donors, but it’s not easy,” says Mr. Bahou.

“We’re managing with the amount we’re receiving — we don’t have a problem — but it’s very tight. Every penny we spend, it should be used very reasonably.”

Things are not yet dire — the clinic is slated for renovation this year, funded in part by the U.S. Eastern Lieutenancy of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. But Sister Najma says the pressure on the sisters is growing, and there is no room to treat more patients.

“Definitely, the economy here is really difficult because of the increase in fuel and gas prices,” she says. Complicating matters further

is a shortage of water. “Even for us, the water we get from the municipality isn’t enough; we have to buy our own, and it’s very expensive.” And more and more of the charitable donations that used to help the clinic are being diverted to the Syrian crisis, she adds.

Even in the face of immense p u b lic h e alth ch alle nge s , t he Mother of Mercy Clinic forges ahead with its mission, which is as much spiritual as charitable.

“We cannot talk about spirituality in our work,” says Sister Najma.

“What we do and how we do it shows our spirituality.

“We are sisters. We’ve devoted our whole lives to helping people.

This is our work, this is our message.”

And the message has gotten through. Though the clinic serves people of all faiths, the vast majority of its patients are Muslims. In the past, Mr. Bahou says, there were tensions between Christians and Muslims in Zerqa, but the clinic spread a message of good work that crosses religious boundaries. Now, he says, people come up to the sisters in the street and hug them.

“Sometimes, when we are in the supermarket, or about town, a woman wearing the hijab, or the niqab, she will say, ‘Oh, hi, sister,’ ” says Sister Nahla, who assists in the clinic. “Even if we can’t see her face, she knows us, and she hugs us. They are kind people.

“Our mission here is for everyone,” adds Sister Nahla. “If you go to a hospital, sometimes they will include ‘religion’ in your file. We don’t have that kind of stuff here. Just the name and the age is what we need to know.”

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isha comes from the tiny town of Busra al Harir, in southern Syria’s Dera’a province. For seven months, she has been living with her husband and three children in a prefabricated trailer in the

“Since 2011, more than half a million Syrians have found refuge in Jordan.” p INSET

Founded in 1927, the Italian Hospital in Amman is administered

by Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of Mary from Iraq.

t LEFT

Located outside the Jordanian city of Mafraq, near the Syrian border, the Zaatari refugee camp has become an interim home to about 115,000 Syrian refugees.

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The CNEWAConnection

For more than 50 years, CNEWA has been a health care force in Jordan, collaborating with women religious to provide health care to the poorest of the poor. For decades, CNEWA supported the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood, whose mobile health care clinics treated sickly infants, toddlers and their mothers in the many refugee camps and impoverished villages of the kingdom.

CNEWA later opened mother and child clinics in the densely populated towns of Marka and Zerqa with the Franciscan Missionaries.

CNEWA continues its support for those healing the poor. Partners include the Comboni and Rosary sisters, the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena and the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of Mary. In addition to the provision of regular subsidies to the Italian Hospitals in Amman and Kerak to cover medical costs and acquire critical equipment, CNEWA subsidizes the Mother of Mercy Clinic in Zerqa.

To learn more about how you can make lifesaving treatments available to those most in need in Jordan, call 1.800.442.6392 (United States) or 1.866.322.4441 (Canada).

sweltering Zaatari refugee camp — located near Jordan’s border with Syria — that is now home to more than 120,000 Syrians. It is a hard life. The World Food Program distributes dry rations every 15

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days, but they include no vegetables, meat or milk. Anything extra costs money, but the prices in the camp’s sprawling market are high, and there are few jobs available. Water delivered via tanker is drinkable, but tastes foul and there are constant shortages.

Hygiene is a problem, and the camp is littered with trenches of stagnant water and open sewers where camp residents have tried to construct their own toilets.

The camp has several hospitals and numerous clinics run by aid agencies and foreign governments, but they are crowded to capacity.

When Aisha’s son, Nuh (a form of “Noah”), fell sick with vomiting and severe diarrhea, she says the camp hospitals could not help him.

Her neighbor’s newborn daughter, Majd, was similarly sick. Unable to get help in the camp, Aisha obtained a temporary pass that allowed her two days to visit a hospital outside the camp. She could not afford a taxi, so she and her neighbor walked for three hours through the desert to the nearby town of Mafraq. From there, a Jordanian woman took pity on them and brought them to the Italian Hospital in Jordan’s capital, Amman.

As Amman has grown, its historic city center has fallen into disrepair.

The city’s wealthy and powerful residents have moved west, into new districts packed with luxury hotels, restaurants and shopping malls. The old downtown area, nestled in a valley that once boasted the city’s main water source, has fallen into decline. The city’s first buildings are now home t o b arg ain - b as e m e n t s o uks (marketplaces) and coffee shops, sur r o u n d e d b y lo w- in co m e neighborhoods of raw concrete and exposed reinforcement bars.

The Italian Hospital sits in the heart of downtown Amman, its blue logo looming over an empty

lot where men sell used furniture and the winding alleys known locally as “the thieves’ market.” It is the oldest hospital in Amman, a private Catholic institution that has served the city since 1926. Now it has become a go-to destination for many of Amman’s most vulnerable denizens.

A large number of the hospital’s clients are refugees — thanks in part to another CNEWA project that provides supplementary funding for both refugees and poor Jordanians.

“Today, I saw more than 100 Syrians in the hospital,” says the hospital’s project manager, Mazen Smeirat. “Today!”

Syrian patients occupy 10 of the hospital’s 80 beds, he says, and their number continues to grow.

Most of them come from lowincome neighborhoods on the nearby hills, from Ashrafiyeh and Hashimi, Hay Nazzal and Jofeh.

Barely one-fifth of Jordan’s half a million Syrian refugees live in Zaatari.

Most Syrians live in Jordan’s cities, living in groups in run-down r e n te d ap ar tm e n ts , w ork i ng illegally for pittance wages and s e e k in g ch ar itab le a s s i s t a nc e wherever they can get it. And there are also tens of thousands of Iraqis, who fled their own civil war five or even ten years ago and do not dare go home. They come to the Italian Hospital because they simply cannot get treatment in the public system, where waiting lists can be months long.

Their health needs are legion, explains Dr. Khalid Shammas, the Italian Hospital’s medical director.

There are everyday injuries and war wounds, acute illnesses and chronic co n d itio n s . Co n ce r n s i nc l ude influenza, infections, hypertension, diabetes and, of course, deliveries — the hospital’s entire second floor has become one large maternity ward.

The hospital treats as many as it can.

“We do not make any discrimination in this hospital,” the doctor says. “All the patients — private patients, insured patients, charity patients — see the same rooms, the same doctors.”

But the needs are immense, and the patients just keep coming.

No single source of support can cover the need. To stay afloat, Dr. Shammas says they draw from the hospital’s own funds, “from Caritas, from CNEWA, from the International Refugee Trust [in London].” For those they still cannot treat, they find some other hospital. “Everything together, we help the people.”

W

hen Aisha and her neighbor finally arrived in Amman, the sickly Nuh and Majd were suffering from amoebic dysentery, perhaps carried by flies or picked up from the dirty pools in the camp, explains pediatrician Dr. Saba Ghawi. Nuh was severely malnourished, a consequence of

the parasites and the poor quality of food available to his family.

“He was very thin,” Dr. Ghawi says.

Four days later, the two children lie in their beds in a clean, sunlit hospital room. Nuh still has splints on both his arms where the hospital had given him intravenous feeding, but he is well fed and smiling, laughing with his mother. Next to him, Majd sleeps peacefully, her dark hair peeping out from wrapped blankets. Their mothers are smiling and chatting, relieved.

But their future remains grim. The children are ready to be discharged, and that means returning to the harsh and unsanitary conditions of the camp. With no end in sight to the conflict in Syria, Aisha and tens of thousands of mothers like her may be forced to remain in Jordan for months, years — perhaps decades. The scale of the crisis underway is scarcely imaginable — both in its effects on the refugees,

p Each day, the Italian Hospital receives as many as 150 patients, many of them among the poorest in the region.

and on the countries that have been generous enough to accept them.

The aid will never be enough. But every gift, even the smallest, can help save young lives like Nuh and Majd’s — at least for one more day.

Nicholas Seeley covers the Middle East from Jordan. His reporting has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor and Foreign Policy.

READ MORE ABOUT CARING FOR REFUGEES IN JORDAN AT OUR BLOG, ONE-TO-ONE:

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 Staying Power

Georgia’s Armenian Catholics retain identity and faith

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text and photographs by Molly Corso

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T

he dirt path leading to Ujmana separates two wheat fields and dozens and dozens of cows. A hamlet counting fewer than 60 families, Ujmana is o ne o f 21 A r menian C at holic communities in Georgia that constitute a swath of Catholicism cutting through the predominately Orthodox nation. But even with few priests, high unemployment and limited resources, Armenian Catholics nurture their faith as an integral part of their identity and culture.

The difficulties of life in Georgia — a profoundly poor nation squeezed between Asia and Europe in the Caucasus — deeply affect its minority groups, such as the Armenian Catholic community. Ujmana’s parish church bears the scars. Bullet holes from Bolshevik guns mark its walls.

The steeple is rusted, the paint is peeling and the sanctuary is lit by a single hanging light.

F o r Voshni k, a 42-year-old Armenian who married into the

village (and who preferred not to give her last name), the tiny church represents everything good and powerful about her Catholic faith.

“Here I feel so good. My husband tells me, ‘you are from the city, and here you are struggling with the farm with the cows’ … but here I feel very good. The mountains, the fields, give me strength,” she says.

“It has not been difficult to keep my faith. When I work, I see God. He walks with me.”

For Armenians like Voshnik, life has its challenges. A remote village some 16 miles from the largest town and 101 miles from Tbilisi, the nation’s capital, Ujmana has no running water or paved roads.

Unemployment — the bane of the Georgian economy — is so high many families have moved to Russia in pursuit of jobs and an easier life.

“People go where they can live,” notes 75-year-old pensioner Joseph Khalajian, a former foreman on a construction crew who lives with

his wife, Oseni, in the neighboring village of Eshtia.

“We have a lot of problems. We have two cows, we can barely take care of them. We can hardly feed ourselves, let alone the livestock,” he says.

Mr. Khalajian’s two sons have emigrated to Russia, along with n e ar ly h alf o f th e v illage ’ s population.

“This was once a big village — 1,000 houses — now there are 360 houses. Of course, they went to Russia.”

O

nce a favored republic of the Soviet Union, Georgia stumbled into the 21st century after a decade of civil strife, m ak in g s u r v iv al p r o b le m a t i c , especially for its ethnic and religious minorities. Armenians have suffered disproportionately as they lack the lifeline of strong personal networks that mark Georgian society. Bad roads, fuel shortages, heavy snowfalls

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“When I work, I see God. He walks with me.”

p The heart of the community since its 1851 construction, the Catholic church in Ujmana has withstood dark chapters in the small hamlet’s history, including Soviet occupation. u The demands of life in Ujmana include fetching water by hand.

Help Armenians grow their faith

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and a language barrier challenged relations with the Tbilisi-based government, isolating Armenian communities in the southern region of Samtskhe-Javakheti.

“Obviously there are several attributes that distinguish the population in this region from the majority Georgian population,” notes Christofer Berglund, a Ph.D. can d id ate b as e d at U p p s ala University in Sweden, who is studying ethnic minorities in Georgia, including Armenians living in Samtskhe-Javakheti. “There is the linguistic one, the religious one, the et h n ic o n e … th e r e ar e th e surnames. So there are many dif fe r e n ce s s e p ar atin g th e population in this region from the majority. Each of these attributes contributes a potential ground for discrimination.”

He notes that while he was researching life in the villages a few years ago, locals referred to going to Yerevan as traveling to Armenia, and going to Tbilisi as traveling to Georgia.

“Which implicitly reflects a state of ambiguity of where the region actually belongs,” he says.

But today life is better for many in the tiny Catholic villages — and their Armenian Apostolic neighbors — which make their ties to Tbilisi much stronger. In part, the change is the result of a series of reforms put in place by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, the outgoing leader who initiated broad, sweeping language policies and infrastructure plans to help ethnic minorities find their place in the Georgian state. State scholarships — and special rules for ethnic minorities taking the state exams — have helped Armenian students e n te r G e o rg ian u n i v e rs i t i e s , assisting the minority communities in creating a life for themselves in Georgia, instead of emigrating to Armenia or Russia.

Infrastructure projects have also helped make life more bearable for Armenian communities. Villages such as Ujmana and Eshtia, along with neighboring Toria, were finally connected to the nation’s natural gas system so residents can heat their homes with inexpensive gas, instead of being forced to buy logs for wood burning stoves.

In addition, a concerted effort

has been made to teach the youth Georgian, in addition to Armenian, the language most spoken in village homes.

Dr. Tereza Ovsepian, a family doctor who serves the area as a physician and an ambulance medic, says life is getting better for many households in the area.

“There are problems here, of course. There are problems in every government. But we cannot say that everything is bad here, and good somewhere else,” she says, noting that she is optimistic the government will resolve issues like the poor roads “with time.”

“The big thing is the road — they need to fix that somehow. They gave us gas — that has been a big help. The social service program is operating well here, there is a free ambulance service and free insurance for pensioners and free health programs. So it is not correct to say we only have problems here.”

Her 30-year-old daughter, Nana, notes, however, that there is little for the young people to do. The villages lack movie theaters,

operating sports venues or even simple forms of entertainment.

Everyone who can, she says, leaves.

There are regional efforts, however, to encourage the youth — and young families — to remain in the area. The local school, which is Armenian, receives free textbooks and computers from Tbilisi. They were also allowed to have religious sisters teach catechism in the school before the community built its own religious center.

Some young professionals are coming back. Nana went to Tbilisi to study, receiving her teaching degree as a Georgian language specialist, and has now returned home. She is the director of one of the local schools and works as a Georgian language teacher. There were also 24 births in Eshtia in the first seven and a half months of the year, a big boon for a community that has lost half its population to emigration.

While th e y o u th s till lack employment opportunities and are pulled toward Russia to find a better life, those who have left are also feeling the urge to return to their roots and help rebuild.

Dr. Ovsepian and other villagers note that locals who abandoned their homes years ago are starting to send money back to make repairs, and are coming back on vacations.

T

he lack of priests for the Armenian Catholic Church throughout the Caucasus p e r s is ts , th r e ate n in g t he development of the church, which is still recovering after eight decades of communist repression. Father Mikael Khachkalian, one of five Armenian Catholic priests in Georgia, says that, in addition to co u r s e wo r k in p h ilo s o p hy , theology and pastoral formation, it takes proficiency in the Armenian language and special training in the Armenian Catholic liturgy to become a priest in the Armenian Catholic Church. The church, led

by Patriarch Nerses Bedros XIX, is one of the 22 Eastern Catholic churches in communion with the bishop of Rome.

OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF CNEWA

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The CNEWAConnection

CNEWA’s work in Armenia and

Georgia, while modest, has taken a variety of forms, including support for vulnerable populations —

particularly children and the elderly — through institutions such as

Our Lady of Armenia Boghossian Educational Center and

Redemptoris Mater Hospital,

both located in Armenia. CNEWA has also partnered with Caritas

Georgia, providing assistance for

the care of homeless pensioners, street children and emergency

care for families affected by war and civil strife.

To learn how you can help

us serve the populations of Armenia and Georgia, call

1.800.442.6392 (United States) or 1.866.322.4441 (Canada).

The deficit has required that a number of Armenian Catholic communities must depend on Roman Catholic priests to celebrate the sacraments, a situation the priest says could compromise the integrity of the church. Some of the “priests who come want to create something of th ei r ow n,” says Fat her Khachkalian, adding that they do not necessarily respect the culture “and that is a problem.”

Father Anton Antonian shepherds five villages — a congregation of r o u ghl y 6,000 people t hat encompasses 65 miles. He runs from village to village, trying to

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celebrate the Soorp Badarak, or Divine Liturgy, at least once a week and make it to all the weddings, funerals and baptisms that occur in his widely scattered flock.

Father Antonian says it can be arduous for one man to serve so many. While he has a car, provided

by Caritas Georgia, he has few resources to form his parishioners in the faith. Armenian-language books, bibles and other literature must come from Yerevan and it can be complex to transport material across the border. But the priest’s burden could also be considered a blessing, for it underscores the continued strength of the Catholic faith in the region.

Unlike in the larger towns, parishioners of Father Antonian have not been inundated with mi s s io n ar ie s fr o m o th e r denominations, such as Jehovah’s Wi tn e s s e s , th e Mo r m o n s an d Seventh Day Adventists. And while they have some Georgian Orthodox ne ig h b o r s , as we ll as fe llo w Armenians from the Armenian Apostolic and Evangelical churches, there has not been any conflict among the churches.

“We are here alone, no one bothers us,” Father Antonian says.

A community of Armenian Sisters of the Immaculate Conception has also helped keep the faith strong.

After 70 years of atheism imposed during the Soviet regime, people have maintained their faith, but little else. Lacking access to priests, the sacraments and regular catechesis, villagers had forgotten some of the staples of their faith.

Sisters have stepped in to fill the void. They teach the villages’ children and take youngsters up to the age of 14 to a summer camp in neighboring Armenia. Last year, they even opened a medical clinic in Eshtia, and now they are waiting for permission from the government to turn it into a hospital.

Older generations, while they maintained their Catholic identity, are still struggling to come to terms with their faith after decades of pressure to abandon it. Built in 1886, when the first Armenian immigrants started to trickle out of Turkey and into Georgia, the church in Eshtia was turned later into a warehouse when the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin went to war against religion in the 1930’s.

Armenian Catholics, however, went to great lengths to maintain their identity and faith. Villagers tell tales about elders baptizing the communities’ babies in secret, and Dr. Ovsepian remembered celebrating Christmas.

“During the time of the Communists, people were also religious,” Father Antonian recalls.

“I remember well the holidays like Ch r is tm as — wh ic h w e r e celebrated.”

But for men like Vano Gasparian, a local born in 1955, being an Armenian Catholic was part of his identity, even if he grew up knowing little about the faith.

“Catholics remained Catholics,” he says, adding, however, that for the older generations it can be a difficult transition from a culture that promoted atheism to a life of faith.

“For the young, they believe with their whole soul,” he says. For the older generations, “for us, it is harder.”

Photojournalist Molly Corso lives and works in Tbilisi, Georgia.

MOLLY CORSO SHARES OTHER IMPRESSIONS OF GEORGIA ON OUR BLOG, ONE-TO-ONE: cnewablog.org/web/ armeniansingeorgia

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Light

Cries From the Heart: Prayers of St. Gregory of Narek

of the

East

by Michael J.L. La Civita

T

he golden age of the Armenian civilization is personified by Gregory of Narek — priest and poet, theologian and philosopher, monk and mystic.

Gregory was born in the year 951 to a family dedicated to the church; his father Khosrov Antsevatsi served as a bishop and theologian of the Armenian Apostolic Church. After his wife’s death, the bishop entrusted the boy to the care of an uncle, Anania. A respected scholar, mystic and monk, Anania founded the Narek Monastery on the shores of Lake Van in eastern Anatolia and reared Gregory as one of the monastic community, to which his pupil remained attached for the rest of his short life.

Few details of Gregory’s life are known, but hints of the man’s years of pain and suffering suffuse his writings, particularly his Book of Lamentations.

Written in the waning years of the first Christian millennium, Lamentations is considered by scholars a metaphor for the preparation and celebration of the Divine Liturgy — an “edifice of faith,” to use the poet’s words.

The 95 Lamentations are grouped together, mirroring the different stages of the liturgy, from the dismissal of the catechumens, the profession of faith and communion to the final prayers in preparation of death and judgment.

The work of St. Gregory of Narek encouraged the development of Classical Armenian as a literary language. His writings also adorn the liturgical rites of the ancient Armenian Church, including the Badarak, or eucharistic liturgy, which Gregory’s father described as “the great medicine”: “We beseech you,” the priest says to himself as he ascends the sanctuary, “with outstretched arms, with tears and sobbing prayers.”

St. Gregory’s monastery thrived for nearly a millennium, but it did not survive the bloodshed known to the Armenian community as the Armenian Genocide (1915-1922), in which some 1.5 million Armenians — as well as Assyrians, Chaldeans, Greeks and Syriac Christians — died. Yet, the writings of this “angel in human form” survive, carrying to God the cries of millions of hearts.

Prayer 95 By your noble and glorious blood, offered unceasingly to please God who sent you, may the dangers be lifted from me, may my transgressions be forgiven, may my vices be pardoned, may my shamelessness be forgotten, may my sentence be commuted, may the worms shrivel, may the wailing stop, and the gnashing of teeth fall silent.

Let the laments lessen and tears dry.

Let mourning end and darkness be banished.

May the vengeful fire be stamped out and torments of every kind exiled. …

May you who grant life to all be compassionate now.

Let your light dawn, your salvation be swift, your help arrive in time, and the hour of your arrival be at hand.

Amen

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N

estled in a warren of unpaved s tr e e ts , s u r r o u n d e d by butcher shops, cafes and vegetable stalls, the grounds of St. Mary Coptic Orthodox Church are a quiet refuge from the cacophony of taxi horns and clopping donkey carts in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. On the second floor of a rickety annex next to the church, Mina Semon, a 21-year-old college student with gelled, wavy hair and bright brown eyes, teaches Scripture to a group of young teenagers every Friday.

The young man adds his own touch to these lessons by connecting his pupils’ daily struggles to the teachings of Christ. One subject dominates his weekly lessons: What is the appropriate way to respond to s e ctar ian in s u lts in t he playground? Jesus, Mr. Semon says, has much to teach the students on this topic.

“Forgiveness, and love and kindness,” he reminds the students, are the correct reactions, but “to control one’s nerves, this is the difficult part.”

It is the sort of challenge many young Copts (a derivative of the Greek word, Aigyptios, meaning Egyptian and specifically refers to indigenous Egyptian Christians) know only too well. Copts make up roughly 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 85.3 million. While Christianity predates Islam and the Arab invasion of Egypt by six centuries, anti-Christian violence has reached unprecedented levels since the January 2011 revolution that toppled the nation’s strongman, Hosni Mubarak. This past summer, that violence reached a fever pitch after the military removed Egypt’s democratically elected president, a member of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Usually, Mr. Semon thinks, a Muslim student may parrot something heard from an adult without understanding the meaning

FAITH UNDER

FIRE Young Copts Persevere in Egypt

by Sarah Topol

z Coptic Christians chant prayers during a candlelight protest after dozens were killed during clashes with soldiers and riot police in October 2011.

OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF CNEWA

19

u Egyptian Christians gather to mourn the death of Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria outside the Abbasiya Cathedral in Cairo in March 2012.

behind the slander. Christian students, being children, have retaliated the same way, turning a typical childish argument into a sectarian incident with violent consequences.

“We tie situations like this to how Jesus would act, drawing upon stories from the Bible and how Christian values demand us to respond,” Mr. Semon says. “Then we discuss the practical ways to deal with it.”

Mina Semon is a reminder of the Egyptian Christian community’s rich history of educating young Christians — but he is also a bridge to the next generation. The eldest of three children, he grew up spending every weekend at church and i n Script ur e st udy. He participated in church sports leagues after school and attended youth conferences across the country. Most of his friendships wer e f o rged during parish activities. Teaching other young Copts, he says, is his way of giving back, and personalizing those lesson plans is his way of engaging with his country.

“Things are different now,” he says. “After the revolution, the youth are more outspoken and want to be involved, because this is their church too.”

Egypt’s Coptic churches — the dominant Orthodox Church as well as the smaller Catholic and Evangelical churches — have been sources of support and hope for its member s t hr oughout Egypt ’s tu r bul en t hist ory, pr oviding religious education and community activities to create a safe space for children while fostering their faith.

But today, more than two years after the revolution, more devout

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young Copts are seeking a bigger role in their community. And they are often doing it at great risk.

F

or young Copts, day-to-day life has become a struggle, fraught with danger. Sectarian incidences have escalated across the country. A feeling of insecurity permeates these young people’s routines.

Egypt’s first freely elected parliament in six decades saw the rise of an outspoken fundamentalist Salafist minority, and in June 2012,

Muhammad Morsi of the Muslim Br o th e rh o o d to o k o f f i c e a s president. Life has never been the same since.

“We try to act normally,” Mina Semon explains. “But there is always a concern that someone will threaten or harass us. I haven’t experienced this personally, but it’s always in the back of our minds to be ready to defend ourselves.”

Mr. Semon says the situation is much worse for Coptic women, because it is easier for strangers to single them out since they do not

“The church was our guardian, we felt safe inside the church walls because the state put us in that situation.” wear an Islamic headscarf. He can sense it when he goes out with his female Christian friends, such as 24-year-old Diana Ghali.

Ms. Ghali graduated from Egypt’s prestigious Cairo University with a degree in media in 2010. Now she works as the executive secretary for the Center for Intercultural Dialogue and Translation in Cairo. Last year, s he mar r i ed her childhood sweetheart, whom she met at her parish 10 years ago. They are expecting their first child in the autumn.

Many of Ms. Ghali’s friends have been harassed on the streets for being Christian. She says she is one of the lucky ones; she has a car and drives to work every day. Her friends who take public transportation convey horror stories.

“It’s terrifying,” she says. “But even having a car, I’m scared to death walking from the building to my car or from a car to any building, and it’s even more terrifying if I park a little farther from the place I’m going.”

Anti-Christian attacks have hit close to home. One day, driving down one of Cairo’s narrow alleyways, her mother slowed to let an oncoming car pass. Through her open window, the other driver leaned out and shouted, “we’re going to slaughter you to cleanse this country of your kind!” and then spat on her face.

With so much insecurity, many Copts have left Egypt. But though Ms. Ghali holds both United States and Egyptian citizenship, she is steadfast in her desire to stay in Cairo.

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The CNEWAConnection

F CNEWA has long been a

champion of the youngest and most vulnerable members of Egyptian society.

Initiatives include support for

numerous orphanages and care

facilities — such as St. Barsoum Coptic Orthodox Orphanage for

Girls in Helwan and the Santa Lucia Home in Abou Kir, an institute

specializing in care and education

for the blind run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Cross.

CNEWA has helped Egypt’s youth confront a variety of challenges through institutions like the

Salesian-run Don Bosco Institute,

which provides vocational training, and Best Life, a Coptic drug

rehabilitation program for which

CNEWA provided startup funding.

To find out how you can help

support Coptic youth at this

pivotal time in Egyptian history,

call 1.800.442.6392 (United States) or 1.866.322.4441 (Canada).

“I cannot escape the things I don’t like,” she says. “I have a dream this country will become better, but it’s not going to be better while we are sitting in our homes.

Everyone has to do something.”

For many, the heart of that “something,” their hope, lies in learning. And the church plays a critical role.

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or the past century, education has been at the heart of the Coptic Orthodox Church’s interaction with its flock. In the 1930’s, schools for young Copts opened across the country. At the time, these classes were revolutionary.

More than just teaching children hymns and liturgical chants, these new schools fostered Christian formation, focusing on Scripture, catechesis and how to live the Christian life.

The late Shenouda III — Coptic Orthodox pope and patriarch of Alexandria, who died in March 2012 after a pontificate lasting more than four decades — was a product of this movement. Throughout his long life, he championed the Coptic renewal and this so-called Sunday Sch o o l Mo v e m e n t. With h is leadership, the roster of activities grew to include sports clubs and summer retreats. Though Pope Shenouda had fostered a safe space for the Coptic minority amid the rising Islamist climate of Anwar Sadat’s era, this also isolated young C op tic Ch r is tian s fr o m th e mainstream.

This was the cloistered environment Diana Ghali’s parents knew.

“The church was our guardian, we felt safe inside the church walls because I think the state put us in that situation,” she explains. “When the Copts faced difficult issues, the state would negotiate with the church or the church would negotiate for them.”

But 25 January 2011 changed everything when many young Copts largely dismissed the pope’s calls to stay away from the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Against the wishes of even their parents, they came out to brave tear gas and live ammunition in the streets. They demanded the resignation of Mubarak, whose nearly threedecade reign made him the only president young Egyptians had ever known.

Together, young Egyptians of all stripes stood on the streets of downtown Cairo and chanted: “Christians and Muslims are one hand!” Eighteen days later, the regime fell. Young people were invigorated.

“After the revolution we felt free from everything … from any barriers,” says Ms. Ghali. “We have our own opinions and we can make our own decisions.”

In some ways, the leadership of the Coptic Orthodox Church has struggled to keep up with Egypt’s political and generational changes.

While young people remain devoted to their parish communities and participate in liturgical celebrations, after the heady changes in their country many are seeking new ways of engagement.

Some, especially university students, are no longer satisfied with the formation of youth, the catechesis and the strict hierarchy that has governed Coptic Orthodox practice in Egypt for centuries, says Deacon John Gabriel, who teaches at the Catholic Catechism Institute.

“They feel it is passé — old fashioned.

“The church,” he adds, “needs to adapt new methods to speak to young people.”

S

amuel Saad, a 24-year-old medical student in Cairo, was not satisfied with the youth formation program at his parish in Beni Mazar, a city in Upper Egypt on the banks of the Nile. He thought the Sunday school teachings were formulaic and rote.

Most of his lessons were given as rules: Don’t do this, don’t do that.

“It was more of forcing things down one’s throat,” he explains.

Mr. Saad and his friends wanted an explanation of spirituality and right and wrong that they could apply for themselves — a way to make religious faith a positive force in their lives. Six years ago, they held

a meeting to discuss their concerns with local church officials, who dismissed their complaints.

But the young friends were determined. Slowly, they began b ui l di n g cont act s among churchgoers. Two years ago, the community held another meeting.

This time, the parish decided it might be time for a change. Today, three churches in Beni Mazar offer classes based on the model Samuel Saad and his friends created.

“We talk to them about Jesus, about developing a relationship with Jesus, a special relationship, not just religion as usual,” Mr. Saad explains of his group’s formation classes. “We try to help youths develop relationships with God in a different way. God was distant from them, now we try to make them more attached.

“It was great,” he says of his group’s accomplishment. “We saw we could gather together, we could make this change and succeed.”

D

iana Ghali says she has her own part to play in postrevolutionary Egypt. She is starting her own program, Eagles Center, to foster youth awareness.

“I believe education and awareness are the two components that Egyptians lack, because most of our people are not educated, they don’t have any sort of awareness, they just listen and follow instructions. I think if we were to take initiative and take 20 young people and educate them, and they each did the same, then maybe it could be a different country,” she says.

But the country’s downward e conomi c spi ral has furt her complicated life in Egypt, a hardship that cuts across religious lines. Since 2011, the country’s economy has tanked. Foreign currency reserves are down and inflation has spiked.

Today, one in four Egyptians lives below the poverty line of $1.65 a day.

Stand beside our suffering brothers and sisters in Egypt

www.cnewa.org

Though the official unemployment rate is 13 percent, most estimates consider it much higher. Young people have been hit especially hard. About 77 percent of the unemployed are between the ages of 15 and 29. Egypt’s youth dominate the country demographically; half the country’s population is under the age of 25.

In this climate, making ends meet is a struggle. While pursuing a college degree full time, Mina Semon helps his father’s small business, installing curtains and blinds, and also enters data at a cemetery office. He is studying quality control in manufacturing at college, but even if he is able to find a job in his field after graduating, he says he expects his starting salary to be between $143 and $214 per month.

“It’s difficult,” he says of his economic prospects.

All of his friends worry about rising prices and, especially, how they will pay to get married and start a family. “This is usually the biggest concern,” he says. “All of us, almost everyone works, even if they don’t get paid well, and we

always try to improve ourselves, whether by taking courses or trying to find more work.”

Though he says many of his friends think about leaving, Mina Semon is adamant. He wants to stay.

“We have hopes of changing things,” he says.

Sarah Topol is a Cairo-based journalist whose writing has been published in The Atlantic, Esquire, Foreign Policy, Harper’s, New Republic and The New York Times.

Earlier this year, she was honored by the Catholic Press Association for her story “Salvaging Dignity,” published in the September 2012 issue of ONE.

FOR MORE ON EGYPT’S COPTIC YOUTH, VISIT OUR BLOG, ONE-TO-ONE: cnewablog.org/web/ copticyouth

OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF CNEWA

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23

Christian’s World



A pictorial journey through the world of CNEWA

by Christian Molidor, R.S.M. Born Into Life 13 September 1929

Entered Into Religious Life 8 September 1959

Born Into Eternal Life 22 July 2013

OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF CNEWA

25

“Mend a quarrel, seek out a forgotten friend, dismiss judgments and replace with trust.

Write a love letter, share some treasure, give a soft answer and encourage youth.�

M

ercy Sister Christian Molidor began her service at Catholic Near East Welfare Association long before her emails to donors, excerpted here. In her selfdeprecating style, she would say she joined CNEWA before the alphabet was invented. She arrived one day in 1984. Msgr.

John Nolan, then the head of CNEWA, had no idea what to do with the Illinois native, so he sent her “packing.”

She went to India, where she visited orphans, catechists, priests, senior citizens, the handicapped and her beloved

religious sisters. She helped cook and clean. She did the wash and hung the laundry.

And she photographed. She took thousands of pictures of smiling children, sisters laughing and patients praying.

She collected their stories, wrote them down, squirreled them away in her head and shared them for decades.

Eritrean sisters, and exuberant villagers in southern India.

It would be the first of many trips through CNEWA’s world.

In her photographs, Christian documented children exhausted by decades of conflict in the Middle East, animated Ethiopian seminarians and

Christian’s love for and faith in Jesus, and his presence in the lowly, the poor and the marginalized, fueled her being. And she shared this love and faith with everyone she encountered. Everyone!

Christian held several positions at CNEWA — from communications director to associate secretary general to special assistant to the president — but she loved most taking the portraits of the people she loved to serve.

For the full story, visit www.cnewablog.org/web/christiansworld

“Speak your love; speak it again.

Speak it still once again.”

Hungry to

Learn Feeding schoolchildren in famine-plagued parts of Ethiopia

by Don Duncan u A child of the village of Sebeya enjoys an enriched biscuit.

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D

riving through much of Ethiopia these days provides a strong counterpoint to images of the country that persist in the Western mind — images rooted in the horrific days of famine of the 1970’s and 80’s. Today, one is confronted with visions of growth, intense construction and, in the rainy season from June to September, lush and very green vegetation as far as the eye can see.

But in some parts of the country, as in the valleys and ravines surrounding the northern town of Adigrat, you can turn a corner and be plunged back three decades — arid, sparse and dusty landscapes, malnourished farmers with tales of hardship and woe. By and large, Ethiopia as a whole is doing much better these days, but in places like Sebeya, Awo and Alitena near the northern border with Eritrea, famine and death are never far from the doorstep.

“I already shiver when I think of the dry season months that are coming. For some schools, we are not sure we will be able to secure food on time,” says Bishop Tesfaselassie Medhin of Adigrat, whose eparchy of the Ge’ez Catholic Church administers some 52 schools in the region. “This is how we live, in a continuous kind of uncertainty.”

It is July, the fields have been planted and this continuous kind of uncertainty reigns over them. Farmers like Gebremichael Gebru, 68, from the village of Sebeya, about 20 miles from Adigrat, look to the skies for the much needed rain. So far, it has not come. If none falls in the next month, says Mr. Gebru, the harvest will be ruined

and his family will have a very hungry year.

One of the many consequences of this condition is fainting — children passing out in class because they have had no breakfast and have no lunch to eat. The task of concentrating on a blackboard overpowers them.

“We usually eat three times a day, but when food is short we only eat once a day,” says Gebremichael Gebru’s 10-year-old son, Teklit, who attends the local Holy Trinity School. “I have to go to school hungry sometimes. It’s very difficult.”

The family used to have more than two and a half acres of land.

But in Ethiopia, where the state owns all the land and has very s tr o n g p o we r s o f e m ine nt domain, the government took half of that land to provide space for housing for the village’s growing population.

“It’s not enough land for us,” says Mr. Gebru. “Now, as there is no rain, I plan to move from tillage to livestock. I’m not interested in cultivation anymore. It’s not sustainable.”

Sustainability is the current watchword of the Ethiopian government and its international development partners.

The numerous terraces lining the surrounding hills, the small dams, r e s e r v o ir s an d can als t ha t punctuate the landscape attest to this. But in Sebeya and other rural outposts, such infrastructure for irrigation and water preservation looks obsolete and resembles the d e b r is o f a fo r m e r, d e func t civilization where living off the land in comfort and dignity was possible.

In some corners of the country, sustainability is a dream and simply surviving can be a struggle.

The CNEWAConnection

Education is a key vehicle to

improve the quality of life, and a major priority for CNEWA. In

Ethiopia alone, CNEWA dedicates

more than $500,000 a year to assist needy children in some 50 schools, including Holy Trinity School in Sebeya.

CNEWA offers three kinds of help to schools in the food-scarce

northern region of Tigray: annual

operational costs for five institutions, plumbing and water infrastructure

for eight schools, and a contribution to food programs providing highenergy biscuits to students in 24 schools.

To learn how you can help

nourish needy children — with

food and learning — in the Horn of Africa, call 1.800.442.6392 (United States) or

1.866.322.4441 (Canada).

A

long with some of the desert areas of southeastern Ethiopia, the northern part of the Tigray region in the north of the country is identified as particularly precarious and prone to drought and famine. In recent decades, the area around Adigrat has been subject to two factors that have worsened its fate: population growth and a decrease in rainfall.

For years now, the population of Tigray has grown rapidly. This means there are more mouths

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depending on the already limited productivity of the land. It has also caused human intervention such as deforestation — to build more houses and to heat them — which in turn reduces the soil quality and the amount of food that can be produced from it. Annual rainfall is also declining, a fact that exacerbates the food insecurity plaguing the region.

The inhabitants of the foodinsecure regions of Tigray must subsist, for much of the year, on aid. From June to September, during the rainy season, they tend to live off the nutrient-rich fruit of the ubiquitous cacti, known locally as beles. Then, their partial harvest usually covers the food needs of the periods from September to December. However, it is from January to June that the region enters its annual purgatory. This is when the government, international development agencies such as the World Food Program and church charities such as CNEWA enter.

“Supporting a student in this way means a lot to a family because you are feeding one mouth,” says the Rev. Teum Berhe, director general of the Adigrat Catholic Secretariat, which helps administer CNEWA’s aid to hungry students in the region.

“Secondly, this kind of food aid means that education is maintained.

Feeding these children when there is no food around means that attendance is kept high and emigration is kept at bay.”

Low attendance at St. Michael School in Awo, a village some 30 miles from Adigrat, has been a problem directly related to food security. Students like Suzi Tesfay, 16, often cannot make it past two periods in class on an empty stomach.

“Some of us live far away and we have to walk a long distance to school,” she says. “We always go home early if we are hungry, so school feeding helps us stay.”

The school has 183 student and 11 teachers across 8 grades and both attendance and performance fluctuates according to the presence of food.

“It’s simple,” says Tesfay Berhe, the school’s director. “When we have school feeding, we have no dropouts. When we don’t have school feeding, we have a high dropout rate. Last year, 5 percent of the students dropped out.”

Grades also rise when food is available. Without it, some 5 percent of students score below 50 percent, the teacher says. With food, the number of students scoring below 50 percent is nil.

The stakes are high when dropping out is concerned.

Emigration is rife in the region. It has become one way of coping with repeated drought. Many of Tigray’s sons and daughters emigrate illegally to Israel or the Gulf states so they can earn a living.

It is a dangerous path and, in some cases, one that ends in tragedy.

“Some die in deserts on the way.

Some die in prison in the countries they have entered illegally,” says Bishop Tesfaselassie. “They are being trafficked across borders.

Their organs are being sold in the Sinai desert. It’s terrible.”

I

n the midst of this kind of tragedy, the high-energy biscuits distributed at the schools provide a taste of hope. Each packet contains three square-shaped, wafer-like biscuits composed of u RIGHT Farmers in the northern Tigray region have constructed retaining walls to protect the soil from erosion. z INSET Children in the village of Awo, such as 13-year-old Tiblets Gebray, often suffer from chronic malnutrition and depend on outside support during lean years.

“This is how we live, in a continuous kind of uncertainty.” wheat flour, skim milk powder, sodium bicarbonate and vegetable fat. For much of the year, this is a lifeline for many children and their families in northern Tigray.

“The hardest time of the year is April and May,” says 13-year-old Tiblets Gebray, an eighth grader at St. Michael School. That is often when the supply of biscuits runs out. But when there are biscuits, she happily eats them, saying they taste like honey. “When we have biscuits, I am glad to stay at school.

That way, I don’t feel hunger until I get back home after school.”

Tiblets is sitting with her family in a canopied area outside her house.

On one side are the family’s few goats and on the other side is an

area to receive guests and dine.

Beyond their homestead lie the forlorn contours of the Awo valley.

Caravans of mules driven by children slowly make their way up its roads carrying yellow plastic cans of water and other goods.

She and her family are about to tuck into gat tesmi, a local dish that resembles an active volcano — a pasty kind of barley dough forms the “crust” while inside is held a lava-like liquid cheese product.

Piece-by-piece, the family tears the crust apart, dunking it in the hot liquid and savoring its taste, knowing that the season of plenty will soon end.

Tiblets’s father, Fisuh Gebray, a 62-year-old farmer, as with many in the region, works in the government Productive Safety Net Program (P.S.N.P.) to make ends meet.

P.S.N.P. is one of a handful of government-led initiatives to rehabilitate the land and engage the local population in that

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www.cnewa.org rehabilitation. The program employs locals to build terraces, dams, irrigation systems and reservoirs in exchange for money in times when there are dependable food markets locally or in exchange for grain when supplies at the food markets run low.

In addition, the Free Labor Mobilization initiative works on a community level, encouraging people to offer their labor for free in exchange for a tangible and material improvement to their envi r o n m ent .

Finally, t he government has a relief initiative, which is a short term, no-stringsattached emergency aid intervention reserved for chronic and dire circumstances.

“The object of all these interventions is asset protection,” says Awash Mesfin, program officer for the World Food Program’s Tigray office in the regional capital of Mekele. In the past, if the farmer is “not providing enough for the entire family,” he sells his “sheep, goats, cows or oxen. Land is also a productive

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asset. By bridging the gap for now, we are protecting those assets.”

The bid to protect assets has led to a curious scene on the main street of the town of Dawhan, not far from Awo, every three months.

The grain compensation for those who work for the Productive Safety Net Program arrives and is distributed. Dozens of men and women gather around a pair of highly stacked rows of 110-pound grain sacks donated by the World Food Program.

“I have 361 people on my list,” says Teum Awala, the local P.S.N.P. grain distributor for the area. “These people are on the short-term emergency list but the short-term list is getting shorter and the longterm P.S.N.P. registration is growing.

This is a bad sign for the state of things.”

Regardless, the infrastructure that may seem futile in places like Awo and Sebeya continues to grow. In less-affected areas, it is yielding crops and returning food to tables.

Development experts expect the

u School meals greatly improve concentration among students, such as Teklit Gebru of Sebeya.

same to happen in Tigray’s dustbowl.

“I am very optimistic with regard to the barren slopes that we see today,” says Bishop Tesfaselassie.

“There is a determined policy now and the benefit of this will be visible. In five to ten years, these slopes will be fertile again.”

The challenges — and hidden potential — of the dusty slopes surrounding the Gebray household are momentarily forgotten as the family finishes off their meal. They chitchat and joke contentedly as the emaciated house cats forage under the table for any errant crumbs.

Tiblets Gebray dreams of one day becoming a doctor. While she may have been at the top of her class at school for five years running, that dream must feel very distant when hunger persists and fainting threatens.

But just as volcanoes were once unassuming landscapes with powerful subterranean potential, perhaps the arid, dead slopes around her, with their seemingly useless terraces and dams, carry hidden promise — and in the near future, food and crops will once again erupt from the ground.

Don Duncan has covered the Middle East and Africa for The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The New York Times and Agence France Presse.

DISCOVER MORE ABOUT FOOD SHORTAGES IN ETHIOPIA ON OUR BLOG, FOR FOR MORE MORE EXCLUSIVE EXCLUSIVE ONE-TO-ONE: CONTENT CONTENT VISIT: VISIT: WWW.CNEWA.ORG WWW.CNEWA.ORG cnewablog.org/web/ foodinethiopia

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from the world of CNEWA

Sister Nahla Francis I didn’t discuss it with anyone. I just made my decision, I asked my family and then I joined.

Maybe it was the way they live, how they treat people. Especially Sister Sana’ — I saw God in her face, in her way. Maybe this is what attracted me.

A

member of the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena, Sister Nahla Francis, 32, was born in the tiny Iraqi village of Batanayah and trained as a nurse. From 2002 to 2004 she worked in a public hospital in Mosul, treating the wounded of the Iraq war. Sister Nahla is studying nursing in Jordan, where she also began her work in Zerqa’s Mother of Mercy Clinic (see Pages 6-11), an i n sti tut ion of C N EWA administered by her community of Iraqi sisters. After a busy day seeing patients, and keeping order in the small clinic, Sister Nahla took the time to talk to ONE correspondent Nicholas Seeley.

ONE: Can you tell me a little about Batanayah? How many people live there?

Sister Nahla Francis: Actually, I don’t know how many people

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there are, but it’s a small village.

Most of them are Christian. We have a few Muslim families, maybe four or five. We have our own language; we speak Chaldean [a form of Aramaic, spoken by Jesus].

The village has one church. The primary school is separate — girls in one, boys in another — but the high school is mixed.

ONE: What inspired you to do this work?

SNF: You mean, from the first?

When I was studying in high school, we had one sister — Sister Sana’, a Dominican. I saw how she was working with us as students, how she was working with the church and parish, and I wanted to join. I asked my family, who refused at the beginning.

Eventually, they gave permission and I joined the Dominican sisters in Mosul.

ONE: So it’s a way of interacting with people — a way of acting that, for you, was holy?

SNF: Yes. Even their prayer was special for me.

ONE: When did you begin to understand what you would do as a religious sister?

SNF: When I arrived in Mosul, it was a shock for me. As I told you, my village was a small village. I saw different people, heard a different language — they were speaking Arabic. At that time I didn’t know how to speak it fluently. But I learned. After I finished high school, I decided to go to nursing school.

Being a nurse fit perfectly with being a Dominican sister. Again, it’s in the way they treat people, the way they find Jesus in others — they see something important in their eyes. It’s a love that is hard to find in a public hospital.

ONE: What was it like to work in the Jamhouri Hospital in Mosul?

safe. When a bomb goes off, the result is the same for all — Muslim, Christian, Sunni, Shiite, whatever.

SNF: The first time I went there, I was so afraid. It can be difficult to encounter such serious wounds and injuries. But, actually, I came to enjoy it. You feel the patient is like a child — you need to take care of him in everything.

In 2004, they moved us to the north of Iraq, where things were safer. I went to an area called Tilkef. My mission there was to take care of the elderly sisters — feeding them, bathing them.

ONE: So was there a lot of violence?

Did you treat war-related injuries?

ONE: And then after that you went to America?

SNF: A lot. I was especially surprised to see revenge attacks over events 30 years past.

SNF: Yes, I went to America, but I decided to return. Here, I’m studying for my bachelor’s degree in nursing.

It was upsetting. We were living in peace. But our desires, and the assurance of the government that we had safety, were not enough.

We still did what we had to do in our habits, but eventually, when I went to the hospital I would change my clothes.

ONE: Because you didn’t want people to know you were Christian?

SNF: Because we were afraid, just afraid. We didn’t know what was going to happen to us, especially because of the kind of violence — Muslim-Christian, Sunni-Shiite.

ONE: What is the situation like there, now? Has it gotten better for the Christians in Mosul?

ONE: What’s the most difficult thing about this kind of work?

SNF: When patients ask you to help them in certain things, and you cannot do it. Sometimes they have no money, but they need expensive medicine. We cannot always help them — this is the most difficult thing — or when the doctors tell an expectant mother to take a certain test, and she has no money to do it. It is so painful.

ONE: And what is the best part of a day? What gives you the most satisfaction?

ONE: So it’s not safe in general?

SNF: The best thing? When you see a smile on a patient’s face — when she tells you, “I feel I’m at home here.” You know? So important! Or when women from far away come here, just to receive a shot, or something simple. I will ask them: “Why should you come here? Don’t you have a clinic there?” And they will say: “No, no. Here, I feel relaxed, I feel peaceful.” That is so important for us.

SNF: For everyone, not just for Christians. Muslims, too, are not

ONE: And you treat people of all different faiths?

SNF: I don’t think so; it’s getting wo r se. I d o n’t see many Christians — from Iraq, I mean — here. It’s just not safe. There are no jobs. Even if you have job, you cannot go and come back to your home, because of the situation.

SNF: We don’t ask them. Our mission here is for everyone. If you go to a hospital, sometimes they will include “religion” in your file.

We don’t have that kind of stuff here — just the name and the age and what we need to know.

ONE: What do you think people in America should know about the situation here?

SNF: I was in America and I know, as a people, they are very kind and sensitive to others. But maybe they need to know we have different cultures. Different thinking, we can say. We are here, living with different faiths, like Muslim, Christian, whatever. But we are here as one family.

ONE: If you could say something to people in America about the situation of refugees, what would you say to them?

SNF: It is a difficult question. I have something in my heart, but I don’t know how to say it, even in Arabic.

[Sister Nahla pauses, then adds:] Let us live in peace, please. Let us live in peace, because we need it.

ONE: In such difficult times, where do you feel the will of God in what is happening around you?

SNF: If God closes one door, he will o p e n an o th e r. I k now everything is bad around us right now, but sometimes you will recognize it — like when you see a child smiling or when you meet a mother who is living in poverty, but has a great sense humor, or when that mother prays.

I know the situation around us is not easy, but God is always helping us in other ways.

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focus

on the world of CNEWA

T

here are many places in the world in which people suffer religious persecution and even martyrdom. We must always reach out in the solidarity of our prayers and our good works to remember them and to assist them.

And this suffering, this living out the reality of the cross of Jesus, has always been at the center of our lives as Christians. But rather than wallow in it, we celebrate it and grow in faith because of it.

Several weeks ago, I returned from a pastoral visit to one region that has known just this kind of persecution: Ukraine. Joined by Carl Hétu, national director of CNEWA Canada, we had the honor of visiting many

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programs and institutions that we, as members of the CNEWA family, are privileged to support.

We came at the invitation of Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, major archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, to participate in the consecration of the new Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Our Lord, located in Kiev, Ukraine, and to commemorate a historic religious event heralding the beginning of the church in Ukraine. Gathered with us for the formal celebrations were Cardinal Timothy Dolan, CNEWA’s chair and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; Archbishop

Richard Smith, his counterpart in Canada; and a number of Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishops from Canada and the United States.

But our primary reason for visiting Ukraine was pastoral — to demonstrate CNEWA’s abiding support for this church that is, in fact, relatively young. Let me explain.

I say “young” because even though the church has been present there for over 1,000 years, it was suppressed for generations — forbidden and driven underground until only 22 years ago. With the fall of communism and the end of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian Greek

Catholic Church has risen from the underground. Today, it is a dynamic and vibrant church. It never lost the faith — in fact, despite thousands of bishops, priests, sisters and lay faithful being executed or sent off to labor camps in the countryside and into Siberia, the faith was heroically passed on to successive generations.

What amazed and moved me was that these brave and courageous people do not complain about their great sufferings. Nor do they not look for pity. Rather, they celebrate their joy of rising with Christ and proclaiming him to all. The consecration of the new cathedral was a dramatic sign to the faithful in Ukraine and beyond that the faith shared in baptism can flourish — even in the worst of times.

CNEWA has been blessed to accompany this heroic church since it came back above ground. We have been able to help support the Catholic University of Ukraine in Lviv from the day of its founding just over 20 years ago, especially through the generosity of Canadian Catholics. The mission of the university includes the celebration of the martyrdom and suffering of those who gave so much to preserve and maintain the faith in the darkest of times. The lesson for us is simple: Never forget that the cross is part of the vocation of the Christian.

During our visit, we were also privileged to visit seminaries CNEWA supports. One in Lviv is a large and thriving facility that has recently expanded to accommodate the surge in vocations. Another is only three years old, presently situated in a rural hamlet outside of Kiev in a large country house. But the Holy Spirit is working overtime at this seminary, as more young men answer the call to priesthood — so many, in fact, that this humble facility needs to be enlarged. Many

of these candidates for the priesthood have already received advanced degrees and are now answering a call from God to serve as priests in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

We also enjoyed some lovely visits with people with special needs, those challenged physically and intellectually. The church in Ukraine is offering noble service to those people and to their families. It is also giving witness of the dignity of every human being. And CNEWA proudly walks with the church in this important ministry.

There are other exciting dimensions of ministry that, for a young church, are progressing quite well, such as prison ministry, university and military chaplaincy, evangelization programs, ecumenical outreach and social service and health care programs.

CNEWA offers its support in all of these areas, even if to a modest degree.

“Sow hope!”

— Pope Francis Remember CNEWA in your will and the seeds you sow can yield a bountiful harvest.

Call us to learn how.

Canada: 1.866.322.4441 United States: 1.800.442.6392

The beautiful, towering domes adorning the newly consecrated cathedral in Kiev are a visible reminder to all that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is alive and well, thanks to the grace of God. Our CNEWA family gives thanks to God that we are witnesses to this great resurrection. We join our Ukrainian brothers and sisters who have come above ground to share their heroic testimonies of faith with us. They do not want our sympathy; they invite us simply to celebrate our faith with them.

God bless Ukraine and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church!

God bless the children and God bless you!

Msgr. John E. Kozar

READ MORE OF MSGR. KOZAR’S REFLECTIONS ON UKRAINE AND SEE MORE PICTURES ON OUR WEBSITE:



cnewa.org/web/393a WATCH A SHORT VIDEO ABOUT UKRAINE ON OUR BLOG, ONE-TO-ONE:

u

cnewablog.org/web/ ukrainevisit

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CNEWA a papal agency for humanitarian and pastoral support 1011 First Avenue, New York, NY 10022-4195 • 1-212-826-1480 • cnewa@cnewa.org 1247 Kilborn Place, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 6K9 • 1-866-322-4441 • www.cnewa.ca

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