People hold crosses and signs during a rally organized by Iraqi Christians living in Germany denouncing what they say is repression by the Islamic State militant group against Christians living in Iraq, in Berlin, Aug. 17, 2014. The European Parliament characterized the persecution as "genocide" Thursday. Photo: Reuters/Thomas Peter
ishtartv.com - romereports.com
2016-08-18
Now
his mission is to tell the whole world that there is an ongoing genocide
against Christians in the Middle East. He knows this because he lived in Aleppo
for three and a half years and witnessed the systematic killing of people in
his parish, for being Christians.
FR.
RODRIGO MIRANDA
Priest,
Institute of the Incarnate Word
"The
experience is extreme. No person in the world is prepared for a war, regardless
of the causes. You see how the whole population is disappearing, all the
material structure is disappearing, and the heinous crimes committed. It
touches us dearly, particularly genocide against Christian communities. It is a
true and documented genocide."
Father
Rodrigo Miranda arrived in Syria a few months before the start of the war in
2011. He has lived under the bombs as a Syrian without leaving the community
entrusted to him.
FR.
RODRIGO MIRANDA
Priest,
Institute of the Incarnate Word
"I
always say that I learned to be a priest in Syria. I remember a phrase from the
day of my ordination, and it is: 'No one has greater love than the one who
gives his life for his friends.' That phrase was really true in Syria when you
literally had to give life, in every way."
The
outbreak of war he says forcefully is a foreign conflict, not born from Syrian
society. He says that while the Syrian government also committed atrocities,
nothing ravaged the country like that for over 5 years.
According
to some sources, 470,000 people have died from bombs. Many other people were
injured or suffered psychological scars for life.
FR.
RODRIGO MIRANDA
Priest,
Institute of the Incarnate Word
"Finding
resources and benefactors to rebuild a country is possible. Therefore it is
possible to reconstruct a country in structure, but there is another problem:
who reconstructs a soul?"
Radical
Islam, represented by its bloodiest Daesh end, relentlessly pursues religious
minorities. In Syria Christians suffered even before the arrival of ISIS,
facing no opposition from the international community. Father Miranda says that
Christians also feel abandoned by the Church itself.
FR.
RODRIGO MIRANDA
Priest,
Institute of the Incarnate Word
"Some
individuals and communities experience pain and abandonment from within the
Church. They expect more from us. They are our neighbors. He is a that brother
dies, it is the same mystical body of Christ's suffering."
Combining
this suffering, the European Union has extended a year embargo on the
government of al-Assad that, it affects civilians by depriving them of the
basics like medicine or food.
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