NARRAGANSETT — The spirit of Christmas giving at St. Thomas More continues in the new year as the church shows its support for a sister parish in Aleppo, Syria, already raising more than $60,000 to aid St. George Salem Parish there.
Although government-controlled western Aleppo escaped much of the physical destruction meted out on the eastern half of the once -shining city of 2 million that served as Syria’s commercial center, the ongoing war over the last four years has taken a heavy toll on its people, leading to the flight of 90 percent of the Christians there from their homeland.
A week before Christmas, St. Thomas More Pastor Father Marcel Taillon encouraged his parishioners to give generously to a collection that would begin that weekend to support the Salesian Oratory of St. John Bosco in Aleppo, whose priests minister to the Christians living in western Aleppo.
Last year, when St. Thomas More became a sister parish to St. George Salem in Aleppo, Father Taillon initiated the first collection to help the embattled Christians there.
That initiative raised more than $60,000, with about 75 percent of the money being donated by parishioners of St. Thomas More and other parishes in the Diocese of Providence, and 25 percent from listeners of Relevant Radio from around the country after Father Taillon took to the airwaves with the story.
“It’s a story of peace and hope,” said Father Taillon, as a series of ceasefires came and went around Christmas and government calls for rebels to withdraw from eastern Aleppo began to be heeded.
And again, as he did last year, he invited a friend and Bishop Hendricken graduate with Syrian roots to come and speak to the congregation about the situation on the ground there.
Anthony Brahimsha, a 2005 graduate of Bishop Hendricken High School spent several summers in Syria growing up when his family visited with relatives in Aleppo. He presented a short video featuring St. George Salem Pastor Father George Fattal, SDB, who expressed his deep gratitude to the St. Thomas More community for their support of his parishioners. Also in the video, Christians attending the parish school expressed Christmas greetings to their brethren at St. Thomas More.
“Father Taillon and I have had a long-term spiritual friendship since my years at Bishop Hendricken,” Brahimsha said. “We’ve accomplished many great things together for the Lord over the years. Most recently we have been called upon to assist the suffering and persecuted Christians in the Middle East, specifically those of St. George Salem in western Aleppo. We pray for peace within the entire city and country of Syria.”
Brahimsha said that Syria holds much significance in the region that gave birth to Christianity. He said that the country nestled between Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Iraq was the site of the conversion of the Apostle St. Paul. St. John the Baptist was also baptized and buried in Syria. His tomb lies within a mosque in the city of Damascus, with both Christians and Muslims sharing the space for their own sacred purpose.
“These are the lands where our faith first originated. Where the first witnesses of Christ were from and their ancestors still reside,” he said.
More ominously, however, Aleppo, which boasted some 300,000 Christian residents just four years ago when the war began, now has only about 30,000 Christians still living there, with 90 percent taking flight from their homeland in order to survive.
Brahimsha said the money donated will help make life a little easier for Christians in Aleppo, hopefully encouraging them to stay in the land of their roots.
“We keep tabs on this one community,” said Father Taillon, who hopes to travel to Aleppo one day when it is safer to say Mass there.
Last Mother’s Day weekend, Father Fattal, St. George’s pastor, visited St. Thomas More and preached in Italian — the language through which he and Father Taillon can communicate most effectively — about the challenges and persecution Christians face today in the Middle East. He spoke very movingly about a parishioner who was martyred and the devastating impact that had on his faith community.
“I think people see the war on TV and it’s like a story, but for us, it’s people we know and love,” Father Taillon said.
“Here at St. Thomas More we’re blessed,” he added. “Our parish has been called by Jesus Christ to walk with Christian brothers and sisters in the Middle East, in a very particular way with one community, St. George Salem in western Aleppo.
