With hope in prayer nuns risk lives to serve Syrian refugees

“I keep my hope in prayer,” said Sister Micheline Lattouff, a Good Shepherd Sister, who with another nun of the same congregation  is among half a dozen  staff members at a refugee service centre  working to give relief – and hope – to thousands who have fled the armed conflict in Syria.  “I seek how to help the children, how to help the families,” she said, calling the refugees “victims in their own country.”

Sr. Micheline is director of the Social and Community Center of the Good Shepherd in Deir-al-Ahmar, a Christian village in Lebanon’s northern Bekaa Valley.

They  help both local Lebanese and 8,000 to 9,000 Syrian refugees who are among the millions displaced since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. The refugee numbers keep growing. Sixty to 80 refugee families, ranging in size from five to 15 people, arrive in the area each month.

These refugees are predominantly Sunni Muslims fleeing a conflict in which rebel forces are themselves predominantly Sunni. They feel unsafe in surrounding Shiite Muslim areas and so have flocked to the Christian village not far from Baalbek, a major center for Lebanon’s Shiite party Hezbollah, a supporter of Syria’s ruling government.  “With the Christian people, they feel safer. Because for them, we are a people for peace. We want to live in peace and love,” Sr. Micheline said. Such a pattern of Christian-Muslim interaction is common in Lebanon, where Christians provide an important buffer between different Muslim communities.

The refugees  live in unorganized spontaneous settlements, sometimes grouped by clan or family. Some were separated from their loved ones during the flight from their homes. Those who could not come by car or bus walked for as many as seven days to arrive, often over mountainous terrain.

Living in tents and houses with walls of burlap sacks and plastic sheeting scavenged from used billboard signs, many of the refugees reside around the Good Shepherd Sisters’ community center.
“They feel very bad at their situation. They want to go back to Syria, and they are not able. It is not a life,” Sr. Micheline said.

The community center was originally established to run school programs and remedial classes for Lebanese children. The sisters have expanded their mission, helping educate refugee children and distribute food to Syrian families, while continuing to support a Christian tent settlement.

The Catholic Near East Welfare Association, a papal humanitarian relief agency, supports the school. The U.S.-based Catholic Relief Services supports the families in the settlements.

The presence of humanitarian agencies can save lives.

Catholic Relief Services funds tents, heaters, wood, diesel fuel, clothes, and blankets for the refugees. Some people have suggested to Sr. Micheline that she could be killed by the Islamic State group because of her work.

“I tell them, ‘maybe’. But that’s not reason to stop my mission,” she said. “I have my mission, and I continue my mission.”  “If they kill me, it’s not a problem… maybe another sister will have courage to continue the mission.”

She cited the example of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, who was assassinated in 1980 after criticizing the government’s human rights violations.

“I think if I be killed, I will be killed because I work with refugees, maybe the world today needs another Oscar Romero.”  The sister said she took inspiration from the 330 Syrian children at the school.

“We can see the transformation in their behavior and their hygiene and their relation between the Lebanese community and the refugees,” she said. “When I see the transformation in children, I see they are happy. They are happy to come to the center, to learn. They want to learn.”

“When I see them, 30 or 40 people in a small room, they are waiting just to learn. That gives me great hope for the future.”( CNA)