The Messenger - October 2007 - Editorial Oct 07
By John Looby, SJ - 01 October 2007
I have discovered, yet once more, how true it is, that something does not truly happen as far as we are concerned, until it affects our own life in some way. I was saying Mass in a parish in a Dublin suburb and was surprised to learn from the notices that Fr. Ragheed Ganni, who had been shot in Musul only six days earlier, had stood at the same altar, and offered Mass in the same church over a number of summers. It was considered too dangerous for him to return home to Iraq for a holiday from his studies in Rome.
It was remarkable how warmly he was remembered wherever he had been. He seemed to have had a special affinity for the Irish. He studied for the priesthood in the Irish College in Rome and whether there, or in the Dublin Parish, or in Lough Derg, he seemed to have really engaged with people at a very deep level. President McAleese, was among those who had met him, and was distressed at the news of his death. It was before the American invasion of Iraq took place, and Fr. Ragheed had told her that for the first time the Christians of Iraq were enjoying considerable freedom.
For those who remember him the contrast between this outgoing, thirty-five-year-old priest, and his brutal killing shortly after he had celebrated Mass on Sunday, 3 June, is hard to take in.
There is an eerie parallel between the passion and death of Christ celebrated all over the world this year, and the passion and death experienced by Christians in Mosul between April and June last. It is a passion that continues. On the feast of Palm Sunday, I am told, bullets smashed the church windows. On the feast of the Ascension, 20 May, during an extended bombing campaign, they were confined to their homes by curfew for three days. And on the feast of Pentecost, 27 May, a bomb exploded in Fr Ganni’s Church of the Holy Spirit.
He wrote to friends, ‘Without Sunday, without the Eucharist, the Christians in Iraq cannot survive’. Despite their decreasing numbers, his people, though bowed by fear and desperation, continued to join together with him in the Eucharist.
Because we ‘knew’ Father Ragheed, we can feel for this persecution. The Pope’s intentions for October ask us to pray for all Christians suffering persecution. Read the article and remember Father Ragheed while you are reading it. ‘Christ,’ he would say ‘challenges evil with his infinite love, he keeps us united and through the Eucharist he gifts us with life, which the terrorists are trying to take away.’
John Looby, SJ