"Christians need a safe zone under UN protection for at least 10 years"

The Patriarch in Fátima

This is a full transcript, in the original English, of my interview with His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III, of the Syriac Catholic Church. News story (in Portuguese) can be read here.

Esta é uma transcrição integral, no inglês original, da minha entrevista ao Patriarca da Igreja Católica Siríaca. A reportagem pode ser lida aqui.

What brings you to Portugal?

This is my first visit to Portugal. I have wanted to make such a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Fátima for several years. We organised this trip for prayer, to pray to her for peace in the Middle East. I did the same thing three years ago when I organised another pilgrimage to Lourdes, in France. So it is a trip of hope, of renewed veneration to the Mother of the Lord, the Virgin Mary, whom we venerate very much in the East.

Is devotion to Our Lady of Fátima widespread among the faithful in your church?

Not really, not as much as to Our Lady of Lourdes, but we will work on it. We are finishing the first church dedicated to Our Lady of Fátima in Lebanon. Actually we, the Syriac Catholic Church, have also the first church dedicated to Our Lady of Fátima in Syria, which is in Damascus. It was dedicated forty years ago. So we try surely to spread the devotion to Our Lady of Fátima since hers was especially a message of peace, hope, penance and return to the Lord, which we very much appreciate in these times of darkness which surrounds all aspects of life in the Middle East, in particular Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

Five years after the beginning of the war in Syria, how do you assess the current situation?

We are all devastated, especially by this hypocritical agenda of the Western politicians. They don't care for anything besides their own interests. I just read about the visit of the second ranking person in Saudi Arabia, the son of the present King, to France. He was welcomed with tremendous respect by the French President and everybody knows that these kind of relations are based on – it’s very sad to say – a Machiavellian agenda, for the interests of both countries, without thinking about the many infractions and retrograde regime which is not even accepted by the family of civilised nations because of the lack of respect for Human Rights.

We are so sad to see that we have been forgotten. Christian minorities have been living in the region for Millennia and we have been forgotten by the so called civilised Western nations. The same ones which pretend to protect the charter of human rights and democracy, equality and religious and civil liberties.

How often do you travel to Syria?

I was born in Syria. As you know, unlike his eminence Manuel III [Patriarch of Lisbon] who is a Patriarch merely in title, we as patriarchs of Eastern Churches are the heads of Churches sui iuris, so the Patriarch is a spiritual head and has to visit his flock, his church, wherever they exist.

So I was recently in Sweden for two weeks, to inquire about the situation of our emigrants, especially those who were forced to flee Syria and Iraq. It's not easy for us.

I usually travel at least once a month to Syria, but not to every spot in Syria. I am tied to Damascus, Homs and the Coast. The other regions, like the North-eastern region, Aleppo, Hassakeh, it is not possible for me to travel.

Your brother Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church survived an assassination attempt just one week ago. Are you constantly under threat?

I think we all, in the Middle East, live a kind of threat and we can't just say that we have to avoid those threats, or we won't fulfil our spiritual and pastoral duties. Of course, we were so sad to hear about that attempt, and I did call him, we spoke right after it, and we keep always in touch, we encourage each other, we try to do our best to fulfil our responsibilities.

In this occasion, his life was saved by the intervention of members of Sutoro, a Christian militia which works closely with the Kurds. Is there a place for Christian militias in Syria?

I do not agree with this terminology, saying that there are militias. There are Christian groups which want to defend their villages, their towns, because they did endure attacks by the Islamic State and those terrorists and many were killed or kidnapped or forced into Exodus. So we encourage our people to defend themselves within the legal army or security forces. We don't speak about militias which go out and fight others, like their neighbours, or take part in conflicts outside the areas where they live.

But in Iraq or in Syria, for example, it is not possible for the government or army to be everywhere, because the sectarian war has been going on and on for years, so the people have a duty to defend themselves. Both the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch and myself agree that we have to stand up to defend lives, families, women, children from being slaughtered like sheep in these savage attacks.

Therefore I am not talking about militias as they are usually described. We don't have militias, we have people who want to defend themselves, their houses and their villages.

Some Christian groups advocate for autonomy in majority Christian areas in Iraq and Syria, mainly in the Nineveh plains. What is your opinion on this?

Let's take each country separately. In Iraq there is no longer anywhere where our people can exist in dignity and liberty other than in a safe zone. There is no one description of what that safe zone would be. Usually one speaks about a kind of province, where Christians and minorities, in the Plain of Nineveh, could live together.

Still now, in Iraq, we have the Plain of Nineveh, where the majority are Sunni Arabs and minorities like Christians, Yazidis, Shabaks and Kurds are not accepted as citizens with full rights. They have been tolerated, so we have been talking about a kind of safe zone, like a province, or a zone which would be decentralized, that is, under the protection of the United Nations for at least about 10 years, until we find a way for real coexistence between various ethnic, confessional and religious groups.

So we are not talking about an autonomous region, this would be unrealistic. We are talking about a kind of safe zone either dependant on the central government in Baghdad, or on Kurdistan. Until now we don't know which of these will control the plain of Nineveh. But for humanitarian reasons we do need some kind of international protection, otherwise the Plain of Nineveh, which is the cradle of Christianity in Mesopotamia, will be empty and when it is empty it will not be for a period of time, but forever, because usually Christians and others don't feel safe when they are not accepted as full rights citizens by a majority which mixes religion and state. That is why we need this kind of international supervision or protection.

Patriarch Ignatius Joseph celebrates
mass in Fátima, with Syriac pilgrims

When ISIS really rose up and took Mosul and much of the Nineveh Plain, Kurds were the only ones who immediately resisted the jihadists and gave protection to the Christians. But since then I have also heard grumblings from some local Christians that the Kurds are really more interested in consolidating power than sharing it with Christians, Yazidis and other minorities. Your thoughts?

As you just said, Christians and other minorities had no other safe option than to get to Kurdistan, because Kurdistan was a nearby region where they could find refuge. The Islamic State fighters and others used to control all other areas.

Now, of course we all know that the Kurds want their own autonomous country, or territory. We will have to recognise that they have the right to have their own autonomous and independent region, or state. The problem is that many of those who are talking about this very delicate issue think that Kurds had to sacrifice themselves for others. It wasn't so simple. They were on the front line with the Islamic State fighters and they had to defend their own autonomous region, with a long front, about 800 kilometres, so it wasn't easy.

Now we don't know what will happen in the future, because we are talking about minority groups like Christians which, it is very sad to say, are not drawing the interest of the super powers or nations, especially of the Western World. So we have been left alone. Where to go? Baghdad has been almost half-emptied of its Christians, and we have no other option than the plain of Nineveh or Kurdistan. We need to go back to our motherland, the Plain of Nineveh, and to live peacefully with others.

So who is going to give us the assurance that we can live in equal rights with the majority? We need the help of the international community to tell the central government of Baghdad and the Kurdish government that these small communities, the minorities, have the right to live in their own land, with the dignity of human beings and they have to provide them with the conditions for a right to live in dignity.

This is in Iraq. In Syria we can't talk about an autonomous region, because Christians are, or were, spread in almost every spot in the country and we didn't have these kind of attacks against Christians as such, but because we have been left, in some areas, alone, and the army of the country could not help to defend everywhere, not only Christians, but also people from other religions or confessions who have been attacked.

Christians mostly feel that they have to be with their compatriots of other religions, and just focus on civil rights issues to build again a nation with equal citizenship amongst all, to build a civilised country for the future. So we try especially to explain to the international families, the tragedies of our people, especially the Christians, in Iraq, to help us stay in our land, and the first condition for that is to be given international protection.

Many people expected the conflict to spill over into Lebanon, but until now, things have been relatively peaceful. To what can we attribute this?

Lebanon, as you well know, has had its share of suffering and civil war in the 70's, late 80's and early 90's. So I think because the Lebanese learned that internal conflict is not going to help anyone and, therefore, they learned that they have to find a way to live together in a kind of peaceful manner and trying to stay far away from the regional conflicts, especially in Syria.

But, as you well know, the confessionalism and sectarianism, the hidden animosity between Sunnis and Shia, didn't help to keep Lebanon out of those regional conflicts. And in my opinion that is because you have a fear that if the Lebanese get involved in this kind of sectarian war it is not going to profit anyone, it will be very bad for everybody and, therefore, with the help of the international nations, either in the West or in the East – that means Europe, America and Russia – Lebanon was somehow spared this kind of conflict. But we still live in a kind of very tense situation, because of the interference from outside.

Most Western countries have grown suspicious of Russia and their interference in other countries, such as in Syria or in the Ukraine. But how do Christians in Syria and other regions, in your experience, see the intervention of Russia in the civil war? Do they see the Russians as liberators or aggressors?

I think most Christians, either in or outside of Syria, see in the military intervention by Russia a kind of deliverance, not only for Christian communities but also for the whole Syrian people, of all religions and confessions, because for the first three years, at least, there was no such intervention from Russia in Syria, we had mostly Western intervention, through the regional countries, Turkey and the Gulf States, supporting, financing and arming the so called opposition – and we still remember what Obama said about that opposition, that there was no moderate opposition – but for Machiavellian interests they kept hammering Syria and calling the Government illegitimate, while we see that it is recognised by the international community and the United Nations.

Until now, the agglomerate media of the West keep hammering on Syria and want to destroy the country, pretending that the cause of all evils is Bashar al-Assad, which is not true, and therefore, Christians saw, in the Russian intervention, a kind of salvation of Syria, because already Syria was half destroyed before the intervention of the Russian army. And although Russia, of course, have their own geopolitical interests, they have been more clear and transparent in helping the Syrian government and the Syrian people, because otherwise there would have been a hecatomb and who knows when it would have ended, because the whole conflict in Syria was based on confessionalism. It is a lie, what they used to say in the West, either in France, the USA or England, that it was a kind of popular rebellion against the dictatorship.

We know that there was a dictatorship, but what kind of alternative did we have in Syria? We had the alternative of the Islamic State. And there were lies spread that the Government created the Islamic State. It is a surreal lie, but this is the agglomerate media, they can very much manipulate the public opinion.

The group of Syriac pilgrims after mass in Fátima

The Pope was just in Armenia where he once again described the massacres of Armenians as genocide. But the victims were not only Armenians, were they?

We feel very close to the Armenian brothers and sisters, the Armenian people and Church, because we have been persecuted and killed and exposed to genocide like them, 100 years ago and many times before and after that.

You well know that what used to be called Asia Minor, present day Turkey, was well populated by Christian communities, either Greek, Armenian, Syriac, Assyrian... And now we can't anymore speak about a Christian presence, it is a very, very tiny minority left.

So we are the same, we feel the same as our Armenian brothers and sisters, because we have been not only decimated, we have been exposed to genocide. We don't exist anymore in Turkey... We have 10 to 20 thousand Syriacs, especially in the South and South Eastern region of Turkey. We had existed with important numbers, churches, monasteries, villages, and they don't exist anymore.

So we are very grateful to Pope Francis for having made this trip to be close to these people. We don't have a Syriac country, we don't have the huge numbers which lobby Western nations to think about us, but we still live in hope that the time will come when the international family will be closer to us and think about our survival, because we are left as the only communities which were very close to the primitive Church. Jesus, the blessed Mother, the apostles, they didn't speak Latin or Greek, they spoke Aramaic.

And I told the bishop of Leiria and Fátima that I would like to have also that verse of the gospel engraved in the new Basilica in Aramaic/Syriac, the language of Jesus and the Blessed Mother. I told him I'd send him the text. [A glass panel by Canadian artist Kerry Joe Kelly, in the Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity, in Fátima, is engraved with four biblical sentences in about 25 languages]

So this is our destiny, rather, it is our vocation, to be real martyrs, that is, witnesses to the gospel and also to shed our blood for Jesus.

Christians in the Middle East are divided into many different churches. Does this division weaken the Christian witness and voice, or is the diversity something to be valued?

I think we have to take it both ways.

Does it weaken? Surely it weakens. Because it is very sad to recall that in those regions where a Muslim majority has the rule, numbers are very important. The kind of rights of minorities are not the same as in civilised nations. Whatever they say, the best they can do is tolerate the existence of non-Muslim minorities. Therefore, when we are, let’s say, divided into more than one church, it is not seen as a richness for the majority.

For us, we say it is a richness, because of those traditions and the patrimony which go back to early Christianity and which enriches the Universal Church and even humanity. But therefore, especially in these times when we have this kind of fanaticism – not only attributed to the majority but it is a fact that the Muslim majority rely mostly on numbers, and as you know they have the notion of the Umma, the Islamic nation, from the Far East to the Far West they are all considered one nation, and this way they can, I think, blackmail the Western civilised countries and spread fear wherever they are, because of their numbers. Besides that you have also the oil resources and now the third element is the terrorism factor, they spread that fear among the civilised world.

So, again, being various churches, would be a richness if we were living in times where every human being would be respected, no matter the numbers or religion. But these times, where the majority wants to impose itself, it is a weakness.

How do you see Europe's response to the refugee crisis?

Since the beginning we have opposed the forced emigration for people or individuals. Especially for us it is a big threat to our survival, because the ones who emigrate do not return. Therefore, for us, migration is a very dangerous phenomenon.

The way European countries have handled this kind of migration was not the right way, because they didn't look at the roots of this migration, they instigated violence in Syria for the past five years, or more, and in Iraq they kept silent about the way the US handled the Iraqi question.

There we also see manifest hypocrisy and Machiavellianism in the way the European politicians handled that question. Because until the tragic death of Aylan, the little child, back in early September, they didn't care and they could find a way to keep the Syrian refugees, around two million of them, mostly in Turkey, with a kind of agreement between European countries and Turkey.

But after that tragic death, the media did talk about it and the European countries were kind of lost, they didn't have the right policies. We don't want that kind of migration based on forced and on sectarian wars. They should have done more to bring more peace to Syria and find a way for the Government of Syria and the opposition to find the best solution for the future. But we know the immediate geopolitical interests and now they have to face that kind of hundreds of thousands of migrants and they don't know how to handle this.

Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III and
D. António Marto, bishop of Leiria-Fátima

I think this is a kind of very wrong policies they followed. And we have said, since the beginning... It's not just the Patriarch being idealistic... We have said, since the beginning, please do not compare the situation in Syria to that in Egypt and Tunisia. In Syria the situation is much more complex, because we have ethnic, religious and confessional diversity, many minorities, and we have to find a way to stop the fighting, and whatever solution would be better than instigating that conflict.

But they have their own agenda. Since the beginning we have said that and now we are harvesting the results of these policies.

In regard to Eastern Catholic Churches, some complained that the Eastern Catholics were treated almost as second class citizens, due to issues such as the authority of Patriarchs outside of their traditional homelands, ordination of married clergy abroad, etc. Are things different with Francis?

There is no doubt that things have been changed, and they have to be changed gradually in a better understanding of the nature of Eastern traditions and the authority of Patriarchs. We keep telling the Holy See that Patriarchs are the head of their Churches and as such they have the right to take care and minister to their church communities wherever they are, be it in the Middle East or in the Western countries.

I think Pope Francis understands our grief and our needs very well, especially in these times where we have been threatened in our own survival in some of the countries in the Middle East, like Syria and Iraq, and we don't have any alternative but to follow our people and to give them the spiritual and pastoral ministry they need. Surely it is not going to be easy, but we keep fighting for this goal, because we think it is quintessential for our survival.

“Western silence on genocide against minorities in Iraq is shocking”

Sister Hanan Youssef

Full transcript of my interview with sister Hanan Youssef, of the Good Shepherd Sisters, who works with refugees in Lebanon. News item, in Portuguese, here.

Transcrição integral, no inglês original, da minha entrevista à irmã Hanan Youssef, das Irmãs do Bom Pastor, que trabalha com refugiados no Líbano. A reportagem pode ser lida aqui.

You work in Lebanon. Are you Lebanese?

Yes, I am Lebanese. I was born in the South of Lebanon, near the border with Israel, but I had to leave when I was 8 years old, I couldn't go back, because Israel occupied this area for many years. After the liberation it was taken by Hezbollah. I never saw it again.

Now I am in the Upper North of Beirut, in a Shia Muslim area, but we also have Christians, Sunnis, Iraqi refugees, Syrian refugees, a mixed population.

Are you Maronite?

Yes, I am Maronite, it is the biggest church in Lebanon. It is a Catholic Church. St. Maron, patron of this church, lived in the fourth century. We have always been Catholic. We have our own oriental liturgy, we have married priests, which shocks the Latin rite a little bit, but we are Catholic.

Your main work is with refugees. Are most from Iraq?

Yes.

The Good Shepherd sisters opened a centre for street children in 2005. In 2006, with the War against Israel, we took charge of a dispensary, a clinic, St. Anthony's clinic. And we welcomed 5000 Shia refugees from an area which Israel bombarded. After that they left and we started to welcome Iraqi refugees, from 2008 to now. All the Christian Chaldean refugees from Iraq came through our centre.

We took a decision as a congregation to be close to this population, because they were very disoriented and needed lots of help, a lot of listening. Their Arabic is a little bit difficult to understand by other NGO's, so they felt more comfortable to come to our centre and all of them, without exception, liked coming here and we took the decision to welcome them, to be beside them and that is why we continue to receive them until today, with the crisis in Mosul, caused by the jihadists, many Iraqis fled Iraq.

In the beginning we welcomed a lot of young couples with their children, they were leaving Iraq forever, but nowadays we are welcoming also elderly people.

Before travelling to Portugal I received a blind woman, in a wheelchair, who is 85 years old. She was forced to leave her home. She was disoriented, very sad, very depressed. I was really sad. I thought to myself, what if it were me, blind and 85 years old, forced to leave my house, my area and all my life behind me? I was really speechless before her.

It is an inhuman situation, This population is forced to leave everything and to flee.

This woman and these more recent refugees are the ones coming from Mossul and the Nineveh Plains... We had heard that many were taking refuge in Arbil, but there are also some travelling to Lebanon?

Yes. When they reach Arbil, if they have money to buy a plane ticket they choose to go to Lebanon and submit a request to UNHCR to get a Visa to go to the West. All of Iraqis dream of leaving Iraq forever. Young people, but now also the elderly, are forced to do it.

Before coming over I also received two young men who came to the dispensary and they were crying: “Sister, we don't need help, we need work”. I listened to them. They said: “Sister, our parents sold everything, jewellery, cars, everything to buy plane tickets for us. We are here now, but we need to bring our family with us. Please help us to find work, to be able to pay for the ticket for our parents.”

Christian refugees in Iraq, fleeing Islamic State

And they were crying. It is unusual to see oriental men crying. I was disoriented and speechless before them, there have been many cases like that.

What is happening in Iraq is genocide. I said that 10 years ago. We are facing a very big genocide in Iraq. It is empty… all the Christians are outside Iraq now. In 1996 there were one million, nowadays we talk about 150.000, it is really a big genocide in Iraq.

Of course there is also a terrible situation in Syria. Do you also have Syrian refugees?

Of course. Our centre receives refugees from Syria, Iraq, other minorities who don't have any place to go. We offer them three kinds of service: Primary healthcare, social help and psychological help.

We have 32 doctors, of all specialities, to help them, because in Lebanon healthcare is private and very expensive, the state is unable to offer the refugees help, because there are four million Lebanese and we received 2.5 million refugees, more than half of the population of Lebanon.

Lebanon has been at war for about 30 years. The entire infrastructure has been destroyed. We don't have enough schools for all the children, enough places in hospitals, enough potable water. It is a big, big challenge.

It is not a developed country, because of the war everything has been destroyed, and to receive so many refugees is a huge crisis. They become poorer and poorer, with no jobs, the Syrian refugees make the society very weak and vulnerable. They are a huge number and among these refugees many jihadists have entered.

The borders are open, with no control, which is why many Jihadists are now in Lebanon, causing trouble, fighting against the Lebanese army, to control a Sunni majority area, as you hear in the news, every day we have soldiers killed by jihadists, and many such things.

The Syrian refugees live in Lebanon with no job. They are killing, stealing, they are violent. They need a place to live but the state is unable to help them and the international community didn't help Lebanon as much as we need. That is why there is really a big, big crisis in Lebanon. That is why we, as the Good Shepherd Sisters, need to be helped. I thank Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), which has helped us to face this crisis.

We know that ACN is one source of help, where do you get the rest from?

We have a few others, rich benefactors in Lebanon, who can help a little bit. In terms of healthcare services, the UN gives us about 10% of the budget of the dispensary. The big NGO which helps is ACN, in social issues, basic needs, clothes, milk, diapers for babies, hygiene kits, the basic for these refugees.

It is possible that the crisis in Syria will spread to Lebanon. If this happens, there is Syria on one side, Israel, with a closed border on the other, and the sea. Where will all these refugees, plus the new ones, go? Is there anywhere left to go?

Nowhere.

If this happens it will be a big war in the Middle East. Until now Lebanon is still stable in the Middle East, because the army has taken control of the situation. I don't know if the army will be able much longer, because it is a week army after 30 years of war. But if the war in Syria spreads to Lebanon it will be the end of the Middle East and the end of the presence of the Christians in the Middle East. We hope that this will not happen. If it does, it will be very difficult.

Lebanon is the country in the Middle East with the highest proportion of Christians. Do most of the Christians in Lebanon feel a special solidarity with the Christians from Syria and Iraq, or do they see them as a problem that they want to solve?

No, we see them as our brothers and sisters.

Winter is making life even more grim for refugees

They are like us. When the Islamic State took over Qaraqosh and all the Christians from Qaraqosh fled, many coming to Lebanon, the solidarity was exemplary. All the churches in Lebanon appealed and all the Christians collected a lot of food, a lot of clothes, a lot of money to help these refugees. We are poor, but even the poorest family gives something to help. It was really an example of Christian solidarity.

No, we don't see them as a problem, we are present to help them and to help ourselves at the same time. We are all a minority, refugees in the Middle East with this big crisis with the Islamic State. We are afraid, in Lebanon as well. We are waiting and praying a lot. Before coming I was thinking about St. Paul: “For you Lord we are facing all persecutions and all kinds of troubles, but we hope in you because you love us”, and our only hope now is the strength which comes from God.

The Shiites have been defending the Christians in Syria. Does the future of the Christians rely on an alliance with the Shia, including of course Iran?

I don't think so. As Christians in Lebanon, in the Middle East, all our lives I, myself also, lived with Muslims, Sunni and Shia. The Jihadists are not Muslim, in my opinion, they use Islam to spread their ideology. But I don't think that the Christians should count on the Sunnis or the Shias. Citizenship is for all, Christians, Sunnis and Shias. We share this country and we need to be recognized as Sunnis, Shias and Christians. I don't think we should be part of any... we are open to cooperate and share this country with our neighbours. We are not party to any political issues. In my opinion we can't count on any party. We need to cooperate with all the Muslims.

Has the response from Europe been what you expected?

Really I am shocked by this silence. There is a big silence about this genocide in the Middle East against the minorities, not just Christians. It is a big shock for me that Europe is so silent, sometimes to save a dog we have demonstrations in the streets. But every day there are lives destroyed in the Middle East and nobody says anything. It is a big silence and we are shocked. Why this silence? As if Human Life is without value. We are shocked, yes, we need a lot of support from this population, we need them to be awake! Why this silence? I can't understand.

Why are we still sending arms to the Middle East? To the jihadists or to the other parties?

We need them to stop sending arms, to stop the arms trade and then many things would change in the Middle East.

Pope Francis will be speaking to the European Parliament next Tuesday. What would you like him to say about the Middle East?

He is saying many beautiful things. He is the only voice to speak of peace and stopping sending weapons to the Middle East. I would like him to say please give the Middle East Peace. Enough war, enough lives destroyed. Enough children in the street, enough children forced to fight. Enough selling women in the market. Enough! It is inhuman and we need to be more human. I hope that he will awaken the conscience of the European Union.

What has happened in the Middle East is really incredible. We sell women in the market like objects. It is inhuman! Stop, please stop.

There are many different Christian churches in Lebanon. Have they been able to speak in one voice?

I don't know if they cooperate. I think there is much solidarity amongst them to face the crisis. Because it is a very critical moment in our history as Christians in the Middle East, a very critical moment. We stay or not, it is a question of life, of presence in the Middle East, that is why I think all the churches are united to face this crisis. We need to be united and to be close to each other to face this crisis. It is our survival, our life on the line.

Christian refugees in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan

Are there members of your congregation in Syria?

Yes. We have two communities in Syria. One in Homs and one in Maaloula, and a third on the border, in the Bekaa valley. The sisters are very afraid for their lives.

They remained in Homs and Maaloula?

Yes. They chose to stay with the population. They risk their lives, but as all the Christians who also took the decision to stay, we need to stay among our people. We can't abandon them. It is not possible.

Many people wonder how they can help. Materially they can give money or goods to Aid to the Church in Need, or other NGO's. In terms of prayer, what would you ask of them? Is there a special saint in Lebanon they could pray to?

Yes. Our patron is Our Lady of Lebanon. Our Lady of Lebanon and Our Lady of Fatima, of course, are the same. We need prayer. Before money, before anything else, we need our brothers and sisters in the Western churches to think about us, in heart and prayer. If we feel that we are supported by our sister churches in the west we will be stronger. We have faith of course. We need prayer, we need presence and we need people to be aware of our persecution.