“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)
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