September 18 , 2006

Torino thanks God for Father Saad Sirop Hanna’s release

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One month ago, on the 15 of August, Father Saad Sirop Hanna was kidnapped in Baghdad. Four days ago, on the 11 of September, he was released by his kidnappers after the payment of a ramson.

Today, 15 of September, a Mass has been celebrated in San Rocco Church in Torino (Italy) to thank God for his release. Torino is geographically far from Baghdad and it has not an Iraqi Christian community, but there is a tie between the two cities represented by the visits that some representatives of the Chaldean Church paid to the Italian city.

A tie begun before the last war to Iraq and that went on in all these past years up to now.

A tie that filled up San Rocco Church of faithful anxiuos to show by their partecipation their closeness to the sufferings of the Iraqi Christian community.

The Mass was celebrated by the Chaldean priest Father Rayan P. Atto and concelebrated by other five priests: Fr. Fredo Olivero, Fr. Silvano Bosa, Fr. Andrea Princivalle from Italy and  Fr. Peter Kilasara and Fr. John Assey from Tanzania. 

Fr. Fredo, the parish priest of San Rocco Church began the Mass talking to people about the sufferings of Iraqi Christians, the need they have of our moral and material support, and the need we have to be closer to them to fully understand the immensity of God’s love, a love that gets over bounderies and different languages and makes us only his sons and daughters.

After the Readings Fr. Rayan read the Gospel of John. (15,18-25) The passage is the one about the hate the world had for Jesus and that ends by the words: They hated me without a cause. From this point it started Fr. Rayan’s homily about the difficult times for Christians living in an ever more hostile world who hates God and wants to destroy His living Church through the forced disappearing  of His sons and daughters from the places where they have been living from centuries ago.  Fr. Rayan’s homily then went on by a touching description of Father Saad Sirop Hanna as a man, a friend and a priest, of his love for culture, his humility, his devotion to the Church and above all to Her younger sons and daughters to whom he used to dedicate all his efforts.       

Speaking about the right Iraqi Christians have to stay in their own country like all the other Iraqi people Fr. Rayan ended his homily saying that to have this right a tribute of blood more than money, and of faith more than fear, will have to be paid.

The Mass went on then in the usual way, a part from the istitutional words of Consecration and the Prayer to Our Father that were said by Father Rayan in Aramaic.

By the end of the Mass people stopped to greet Father Rayan, to speak with him and to wish him and his community a better future.

Luigia Storti

Pastoral Migrants Office Archdiocese of Torino (Italy)

Foto di Daniele Dal Bon

 Friday, 15 September 2006