Firmly Planted Religious communities remain steadfast in Aleppo text by Arzé Khodr with photographs by Raghida Skaff
T
he exodus of hundreds of thousands of Christians from Syria in the past decade has not shaken the commitment of religious men and women to remain and serve those who stayed behind. “Those who stayed are the poor,” says Father Georges Fattal, S.D.B., a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco of the small Christian community in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. The congregation of priests and religious brothers, founded in Italy by St. John Bosco in 1869 to minister to the young and the poor, marks 75 years of ministry in Aleppo this year. “Despite the risks, war and death, we will never leave [Syria] because we have chosen to serve the youth,” he says. “Wherever there are young people, despite exhaustion, pain and war, we will stay by them to share in their lives.” An important Salesian apostolate in Aleppo is the Georges and Matilde Salem Center, which serves about 850 youth with the help of 120 volunteers. Even in the darkest
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hours of the civil war, which ravaged the country from 2011 to 2021, the center did not close its doors. It was “out of the question” to abandon the children to fear, says Father Fattal, whose community mobilized to create a semblance of normalcy for the children. “We were hit by a cluster bomb [in 2014],” he explains. “Glass was shattered, but we repaired everything immediately and, in the afternoon, we continued the activities with the children.” The center was a hub for humanitarian relief during the civil war, distributing food and medicine to all people in need without distinction. In February 2023, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the city, bringing down homes and apartment buildings, about 800 people took shelter at the center, some of them for up to five weeks. With no resources to spare, the 73-year-old priest recalls how “providence … took care of everything.” With CNEWA support,
the center provided three meals a day, medicine and other basic necessities. Many donations came from past pupils — a term Salesians use to refer to those who attended their schools and programs — before they fled Aleppo, a sign of their appreciation for the work of the Salesians. Srour Ibrahim, 24, teaches catechism at the center and leads a children’s fraternity. A recent dental school graduate, Srour has no expectations to work as a dentist in Aleppo. Instead, he is among the many volunteers who attended the center as a child and now assists in carrying out its programming. “If it weren’t for this center, we would have left long ago,” he says. “It’s the only place where we feel physically and psychologically safe while everything around us is falling apart. For me, it’s like home.” Religious women stroll in Aleppo’s Christian quarter.