ICC Note: The death of Jesuit Priest Frans van der Lugt has highlighted the incredible work that many Christians are doing in attempting to provide aid and care to those hurting and suffering in Syria. The conflict that has claimed more than 150,000 lives has also displaced nearly a full 1/3 of the country, nearly 9 million people. The church has been an incredible place of peace and love for many broken lives, while at the same time being targeted themselves by Islamic extremist groups.
04/15/2014 Syria (National Catholic Register) – He decided to remain with Christ crucified in the suffering people of Syria.
And for that choice, a gunman gave the faithful son of St. Ignatius his martyr’s crown.
On April 7, a masked gunman abducted Jesuit Father Frans van der Lugt in the early morning from his Jesuit monastery in Homs, where some 24 remaining Christians had taken refuge, took him out in the street and shot him twice in the head, according to information the Dutch Jesuit Order provided Agence France-Presse. The priest is another Christian martyr in a savage conflict that has claimed close to 150,000 lives, displaced 7 million people and has no end in sight.
The 75-year-old Dutch priest had been a missionary in Syria for 50 years, and he took care of children with intellectual disabilities. Caught between besieging Syrian government forces without and the rebel forces within the Old City district of Homs, Father van der Lugt made the monastery where he was superior a refuge for Christian and Muslim families and their children, suffering and starving. And he remained, even when offered the chance of safe passage out of the city.
The Islamist Al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate filled with foreign fighters, is one of the rebel forces holding the Old City of Homs. The New York Times reported speculations that the Syrian government’s amnesty to Syrian rebels may have led to the exodus of native rebel fighters who had been protecting him from extremist fighters.
The news of Father van der Lugt’s murder has sent shockwaves around the world. Both sides of the Syrian conflict have been quick to blame the other for the Jesuit priest’s brutal execution.
A profoundly distressed Pope Francis condemned the “brutal murder,” saying the Dutch-born Jesuit’s death “has made me think again of the many people who are suffering and dying in that tormented country, my beloved Syria.”
In a heartfelt plea to the international community and both sides of the Syrian conflict, the Pope spoke out, “Please, silence the weapons; put an end to the violence! No more war! No more destruction!”
The last few months of Father van der Lugt’s journey in the footsteps of other Jesuit martyrs before him were filled with the priest’s witness to justice, peace and solidarity with the suffering Syrian people trapped in the inferno of war. Besieging government troops had bombed and shelled the rebel-occupied Old City district of Homs for months by January 2014, when Father van der Lugt’s impassioned pleas on behalf of 3,000 starving civilians, especially children, helped broker a U.N.-supervised humanitarian operation in February.
“We love life; we do not want to drown in a sea of pain and death,” Father van der Lugt told the Jesuit Refugee Service just days before the humanitarian deal came through.
“I don’t see Muslims or Christians. I see, above all, human beings,” he said.
The pause in hostilities allowed more than 1,400 Syrian civilians to evacuate the city, provided an amnesty to Syrian rebels (but not foreign fighters) willing to lay down their arms and leave and brought food to some of the remaining civilians. But Father van der Lugt told the Jesuit Refugee Service that he was staying: It was “impossible” for him to leave.
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