Madrid, Spain, May 18, 2016 / 12:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Father Rodrigo Miranda is a priest from Chile. But it was in Syria, among the oppressed Christian community, that he learned what it really meant to be a priest.
“They wake us up to the essential and important things in life,” he told the Spanish daily ABC. The witness of the persecuted Christians in Syria is “an antidote for the mediocre and decadent world of our societies.”
Fr. Miranda is a member of the Institute of the Incarnate Word. He lived in Aleppo, Syria from March 2011 until late 2014, when he was forced to leave the country. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in the country’s ongoing civil war, while millions have been displaced from their homes.
The war has affected church attendance in the outlying areas.
“On the weekends we used to have between 250 and 300 people, now we have 15,” the priest said. “More people go to the churches in the center of town because they’re more protected. Since we’re a minority, we all know each other. We know by first and last name those who have been killed.”
Though the war has changed life for Syria’s Christians, their faith endures.
“In all the years I was in Syria, I never heard one person complain against God. Just the opposite. They thank God every day,” Fr. Miranda said. “When they tell you the most terrible stories they always finish by saying ‘But thanks be to God we’re alive, we can come to church.’ The Christians in the Middle East have a different temperament. Every time there’s a bombardment, the church is filled up. I don’t see sad faces, although that doesn’t mean they’re not suffering.”
He sees a contrast with the experience of Christianity in the West.
“In the West you’ve got to put on a whole Hollywood style pastoral ministry to attract young people to the parish,” he said. “In Aleppo many times the young people sat down to talk about what would happen if the Islamic rebels came into their neighborhoods to kill them. They asked me: ‘Father, is it true that you’ve got to give your life for Christ?’ These were the things they talked about. I learned to be a priest in Syria.”
According to Father Miranda, the Christian population in Syria has gone from 10 percent to just 2 percent because they’re targeted not just by the Islamic State group, but also by the Syrian opposition.
“The Church in Aleppo continues to be very fervent, very devoted, with a lot of activity. We of the Latin Rite are a minority within the minority,” the young priest said.
The Catholic Church’s different rites continue to supply aid, the priest said. And this is not just material aid, but rather, they act “continually to offer hope.”
Article Archive
The suffering of Syria's Christians taught him how to be a priest
Related Articles • More Articles
Pope Francis prays during his Wednesday general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on April 24, 2024. / Credit: Vatican MediaACI Prensa Staff, Apr 25, 2024 / 16:10 pm (CNA).Asked during a new interview if he has any message for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who instigated the war in Ukraine, Pope Francis stated that "a negotiated peace is better than an endless war."CBS News broadcast some excerpts April 24 from a new interview conducted by journalist Norah O'Donnell with Pope Francis at St. Martha House, the pontiff's residence in the Vatican.During the exchange, the full version of which will be released on May 19, the Holy Father reflected on world conflicts and especially on the suffering of children during wars.O'Donnell asked the Holy Father if he had any message for Vladimir Putin regarding Ukraine, to which the pontiff replied: "Please, countries at war, all of them... Stop the war. Seek to negotiate. Seek peace. A negotiated peace is better than an e...
An aerial view of Washington Square in San Francisco on May 22, 2020. / Credit: JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty ImagesCNA Staff, Apr 25, 2024 / 16:45 pm (CNA).San Francisco police arrested a homeless man last Sunday for allegedly stabbing a parent from a nearby Catholic school after an altercation involving the two outside a historic Catholic church in the city. Twenty-five-year-old Marko Asaulyuk of San Francisco was charged with attempted murder and eight counts of assault with a deadly weapon.The Catholic school father, who was released from the hospital Sunday, only suffered a minor injury to his leg, Father Tho Bui, pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul Church, told CNA Thursday in an email.San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone was conferring the sacrament of confirmation on the parish school's students and students from a nearby parish during a noon Mass when a "disruptive man" entered the church, as Bui described him.The man was walking up and down the main aisle of the ...
The pro-life flag from the Pro-Life Flag Project (www.prolifeflag.com). / Credit: Pro-Life Flag Project (www.prolifeflag.com)Toronto, Canada, Apr 25, 2024 / 12:50 pm (CNA).The International Pro-Life Flag will not fly over Toronto Catholic schools this May.Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) trustees voted against an April 23 motion proposed by trustee Michael Del Grande that the pro-life flag fly outside all schools and the Catholic Education Centre during the month of May, just as the board voted to fly the Pride flag in June.Del Grande's motion was defeated at the April 23 board meeting when only Garry Tanuan supported Del Grande's motion. The eight other board members in attendance and the two student trustees opposed his proposal.Though Del Grande could not muster enough backing from his colleagues, his plan, which would have also directed all TCDSB schools to teach an exclusively pro-life curriculum on May 9, the day of the National March for Life, garnered bois...