After their seminary in Qaraqosh was dissolved following a brutal ISIS
attack in 2014, four Iraqi seminarians chose not to give up after being
forced to flee, but to continue their path to the priesthood.
Now,
a year and a half after the attack that uprooted them from their homes,
the four men will be ordained deacons, and have chosen a church in an
Erbil refugee camp for the March 19 ceremony.
“People want hope,
and when they see that there are four young people who will become
deacons and after a few months they will priests, that will give them
hope and the power to stay,” Remi Marzina Momica told CNA March 17.
Momica
is one of the four seminarians from the Syriac Catholic Church of Mosul
who will be ordained Saturday. All of them formerly studied at
St. Ephraim’s seminary in the mainly Christian city of Qaraqosh, which
is now under the control of ISIS.
The young seminarians were
forced to flee the city when the militants attacked on Aug. 6, 2014,
driving out inhabitants who didn’t meet their demands to convert to
Islam, pay a hefty tax or face death.
Before being forced to
leave Qaraqosh, Momica and his sister were among the victims wounded in
the 2010 bombing of buses transporting mainly Christian college students
from the Plains of Nineveh to the University of Mosul, where they were
enrolled in classes.
Since the Qaraqosh seminary has been closed
following the 2014 attack, the four seminarians were sent to finish
their studies at the Al-Sharfa Seminary in Harissa, Lebanon.
The
only seminary left in Iraq providing formation for diocesan priests in
the country is the Chaldean rite’s St. Peter Patriarchal seminary for
the Chaldean Patriarchate in Erbil. Archbishop Bashar Warda is the
Chaldean Archbishop who oversees the Chaldean diocese of Erbil.
After completing their studies in Lebanon, the four Syriac Catholic rite seminarians returned to Iraq for their ordination.
Momica,
whose family fled to Erbil, where they are still renting a small house,
said he and the other three seminarians told their bishop that they
specifically wanted their ordination to take place in a refugee camp,
“because we are refugees.”
“We want our people to know, we want
to tell everyone that there are young people who will become priests,”
he said, explaining that the event will be a sign of hope for the
Christians who are left.
Fr. Giorgio Kahona, the priest in charge
of accompanying the four men until their deaconate ordination, told CNA
that the church where the ordination will take place sits in a refugee
camp in Ankawa, a suburb of Erbil.
The large church welcomes
refugees in for daily and Sunday Masses, he said, adding that the
seminarians “chose this church specifically to demonstrate their
closeness to the people who suffer.”
He said they invited “the
entire Church” to participate in the ordination, including
bishops, priests and laity from other rites.
Archbishop Yohanno
Petros Moshe, Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Kirkuk and Kurdistan,
is the seminarians’ bishop, and will be the one to ordain them.
Other
concelebrants will include bishops from other churches, including the
Chaldean and Orthodox churches, he said, adding that in this sense, “it
will become a communion around the altar, around Christ.”
Fr. Kahona said
90 percent of the Syriac-Catholic faithful in the Erbil diocese are
refugees, so seeing the ordination of four young men will give hope to
the local Church.
It will also give hope to the universal Church,
he said, because “despite the difficulty, there are vocations, youth,
who give themselves for the Church, to serve the people of God. This is
important in our times.”
Sharing his personal feelings on his
ordination, Momica said he is both happy for the new step in his
vocational life, but also sad that that many of his family members won’t
be able to be there.
“I am very happy to become a deacon, I am
so happy! But I am so sad because I am so far away from my town, from my
seminary in Qaraqosh, and we lost many people,” he said.
The
seminarian said that the thought of serving the Church fills him with
joy, but that there is also a deep sadness “because there are many
people who won’t be there at the time of my ordination.”
While his immediate family is with him in Erbil, Momica’s other relatives left after ISIS began their siege.
The
seminarian, who currently works with refugees, said that he would like
to stay in Erbil after his ordination so that he can be with his family
and other members of his Church.
“I want to stay here in Iraq and
I want to know if there is anyone who can help us to stay, to speak
with the governments outside to see if they can help us to stay here,”
he said.
With the future of Christianity in Iraq uncertain, there
are many who want to stay, but don’t see a clear solution in sight, he
said.
“Our people want to see what the future is here in Iraq for
Christians. And...we don’t know the future of Christians here in Iraq,”
Momica said, but added that despite the uncertainty, there are still
people that are willing to give it a shot.
