As Israel continues a major military operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon, seeking to provide a buffer zone for residents of the north of the country against attacks by the Iran-backed militia, Catholic religious orders have opened their doors to Lebanese who are displaced from their homes.
According to the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, several religious communities in Lebanon are sheltering internally displaced persons fleeing the violence.
Communities include the Daughters of Charity, the Salvatorian Fathers, and a Franciscan congregation.
Early Tuesday morning, Israel launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon in the wake of massive missile attacks against suspected Hezbollah targets. Both actions followed Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last Friday. Lebanon’s prime minister has said that 1 million people have now been displaced.
Iran launched a barrage of ballistic missiles against Israel on Tuesday evening, further heightening fears of an all-out region-wide escalation in hostilities. Tehran said the attack was in retaliation for the killing of Nasrallah, as well as the Israeli assassination in July of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in the Iranian capital.
Christian villages
Some of the areas in which Israel carried out its ground assault include largely Christian villages of south Lebanon.
“Some of the towns and villages that the Israeli military has ordered civilians to evacuate are largely Christian communities where Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group, does not exercise as much control as it does elsewhere in southern Lebanon,” New York Times reporter Euan Ward wrote October 1. “For nearly a year, Israeli bombardment has largely spared them, although many residents have already fled, turning some of the places into ghost towns.”
Ward reported that residents of Ain Ebel, a predominantly Christian town in southern Lebanon, reported chaos on Tuesday after the Israeli military ordered their village to evacuate. “Dozens of cars swerved around each other as they attempted to flee, with residents saying that more than 250 people left in the space of just a few hours.”
Another Christian village that had to be evacuated is Deir Mimas, about 90 minutes south of Beirut.
“Deir Mimas is now empty,” Franciscan Fr. Toufiq Bou Merhi, a friar of the Custody of the Holy Land, told TerraSanta.net, a publication of the Holy Land Foundation. “Last night the bombs reached the village and the houses. After the evacuation order from the Israeli army, people fled.”
A small Christian community in Tyre cared for by the friars also had to evacuate to the Lebanese capital.
“I myself left Tyre yesterday afternoon, after all the displaced people had left the convent following the attack on Saturday,” Fr. Merhi said. “The entire neighborhood is now empty. The people, being afraid, preferred to leave. Yesterday morning, Monday, seeing the empty convent, I said to the other brother who is with me: 'We are not here to be heroes. We were and have stayed to help people. Now the neighborhood is empty and the displaced people we helped have left. Let’s go to Beirut where we can help people more.'”
(Jesus spent time in Tyre, as mentioned in Matthew 15:21.)
The priest added that he and the other friars removed the Blessed Sacrament and some relics from their monastery. He said that parishioners called him from Deir Mimas to say they would leave in small groups of cars, because even roads and cars were being targeted by the military.
He noted that some of the parishioners have relatives in Beirut, so three or four families now live in one house.
Providing shelter
For some of the other IDPs, religious houses offered refuge, as CNEWA reported. The Daughters of Charity, who run various schools, hospitals, and dispensaries, opened four of their centers in Beirut, Metn, Kesrouan and the Chouf region. They were able to receive up to 750 people, including 400 in the Beirut center. If needed, they might open two other centers in Mount Lebanon and North Lebanon, which could take another 300 people.
The Salvatorian Fathers opened the doors of their seminary in the Kesrouan region, which can accommodate 35 people. The rector and staff tend to the needs of the displaced, providing food and basic hygiene kits.
The Sisters of Jesus and Mary Congregation, who are present and active in supporting poor families within the Bourj Hammoud area in Beirut, are housing 80 families from southern Lebanon, from Debel and Ain Ebel.
Aid to the Church in Need reported that Sister Maya El Beaino, of the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, has decided to remain in the monastery of St. Joseph in Ain Ebel, southern Lebanon, a few miles from the Israeli border, in spite of ongoing airstrikes.
“There are still some 9,000 Christians here in three different villages. We are in constant danger,” Sister Maya said. “There is no hospital in the area, no Red Cross, and we have only three hours of electricity a day. That means: no internet, no water!”
Other communities that have been able to receive smaller groups include the Salvatorian Sisters in the Chouf region, the Franciscan Sisters of Mary Immaculate in the Jbeil region, and the Blessed Sacrament Sisters in Ain Warka in the Keserwan region.
The Joint Christian Committee and the Little Sisters of Nazareth in the Dbayeh Refugee Camp, where some 500 Palestinian and Syrian families live, have received 30 displaced families from different areas of Lebanon, CNEWA said.
