Happy Easter! Miracle Sound Radio invites you to know the reality of our persecuted brothers, who even celebrating the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus, today continue to live their Good Friday.
“There are many Christians who experience a continuous Good Friday throughout their lives.” This is shown by the Report on Religious Freedom in the world that AIN publishes biennially and that analyzes the situation of this right in 196 countries with experts who know the situation in each country on the ground.
In its latest edition, an estimated 334 million Christians live in countries of persecution and 60 million more live in countries where they are discriminated against, simply for the fact of being baptized. This discrimination means that there is not so much violence, that the persecution is not bloody, but that for example you cannot access depending on what positions in the administration because you are Christian, or you cannot access the university and you are a second or third class citizen .
I have been able to experience this first-hand in the Central African Republic fifteen days before the Pope’s visit in 2015, the situation was really very extreme. It is a failed country where the only structure that really supported the country was that of the Church and that is what made it possible to attend to the thousands of refugees. It is a very violent country and in the latest report the UN appears as the poorest country in the world.
Also in Lebanon, I was visiting mostly Syrian refugee camps who had to flee because of the war. There the Catholic Church not only serves Catholics and Christians, but does not ask for the “DNI” to serve people. In addition, a third of the population of Lebanon are already refugees and are about to stabilize, but despite everything they have open arms.
In Iraq I was in Kurdistan, where 120,000 Christians had to flee with their clothes and take refuge there. These Christians lived in and around Mosul and with the arrival of ISIS they had to flee and went to this area of Iraqi Kurdistan. They have been in exile for 3 years there and we have been helping from minute zero, both the priests and bishops who had to flee and all the civilians, families, elderly children … who arrived without anything from day to night.
All the children have been able to go to school, they have been able to feed themselves, give medicines, pay operations, pay rents… because one thing that the Church is very clear about is the dignity of all these people. It cannot be that they are in fields, in tents, where the day it rains there you cannot live there, where there are epidemics.
AIN has made a very great effort, the largest campaign in history so that these Christians who have left everything in order not to renounce their faith, can move on and stay in their land. Now that the Islamic State has withdrawn, we are helping them return home. With all that the reconstruction of both religious buildings and houses means, as a reconstruction of hearts, of restoring that coexistence again when you know that your neighbor has betrayed you and when you return you see that your neighbor has your television or has your car or that they have burned your whole house. A lady commented to us “ I am happy because they are going to rebuild my house, but I am a widow and here I see my husband’s photo album burned… who is going to give it back to me?”. Very much pain, but at the same time with that Christian hope and with forgiveness.
MARTA GARCÍA
Miracle Sound Radio
