Worthy Brother Knights and Knight Families:
Hopefully all of you had a nice cool summer, taking the family on summer vacations, or just hanging out at home, enjoying the kids’ time off from school. While we are fortunate to engage in these wonderful pastimes and family activities, as Catholics we are reminded never to forget those suffering, less fortunate, or the vulnerable members of our community. It is with this vigilance that we speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, shelter those who need it, stop suffering where we see it, and give love to those who need it.
We join the Holy Father, Pope Francis, in prayer for those “who are being persecuted, exiled, killed, decapitated for the sole reason that they are Christian.” Indeed, Pope Francis professed that “They are our martyrs of today, and they are so many, we could say that they are more numerous than in the early centuries.” (www.christiansatrisk.org; Charity in the Land of New Martyrs, Christians displaced in the face of religious persecution receive aid through the Order’s Christian Refugee Relief Fund, 6/1/15, by Andrew J. Matt.)
The number of Christians being killed for their faith varies. According to data cited in our Supreme website, “Christians killed every day on the basis of religious hatred [are] at twenty, almost one per hour.” (Ibid.)
“In order to escape persecution, many Christians have left areas where they have played a vibrant role in social, political and cultural life for centuries. Worldwide, the number of people forced from their homes has surged past 50 million for the first time since World War II, according to a June 2014 report of the U.N. Refugee Agency. Before the Iraq War in 2003, Christians in Iraq numbered approximately 1 million out of a population of 25 million. In September 2014, an estimated 300,000 Christians remained in the country. In the ancient city of Mosul, where some 60,000 Christians lived prior to 2003, today there are none.” (Ibid.)
“Likewise, the combined effects of five years of civil war in Syria and the Islamic State onslaught there have been devastating. The war alone has left 220,000 people killed, 7.6 million internally displaced, and 3.9 million refugees. Whereas Christians used to make up 10 percent of Syria’s 22 million people prior to the war, Islamic State militants have ensured that large swaths of the country have now become ‘Christian-free zones.’ In Aleppo, recently dubbed ‘the martyr city’ by Pope Francis, Christians fear that they could suffer the same fate as Mosul.” (Ibid.)
In the face of this heartbreaking and terrifying reality that our fellow Christians find themselves in, many of us might ask the simple question . . . why? Since 9/11, we find ourselves in the depths of the battle of ideas and for the hearts of humanity. Islamic extremism challenges our temperaments, tugs at our fears, and baits our impetuousness for violence. While we enjoy a society founded on enlightenment principles like free speech and freedom of religion based on a secular government (of no state sponsored organized religion), ISIS and like-minded individuals would have a society rooted in theocratic principles. As such, enlightenment principles for Islamic extremism is, in their view, heretical in nature. Thus, it is their duty to exterminate such communities from the Earth. (See World Order, Kissinger, H., Penguin Press, 2014, Ch. 3.)
With that said, the Supreme Council of our Order has created the “Christians At Risk” program, which provides relief to persecuted Christians in the war torn Middle East. You can find more information at www.christiansatrisk.org. The website contains more information for those who wish to help.
Brothers, let us keep our fellow Christians in the Middle East in our hearts and minds. In continuing with our works of mercy as Knights of Columbus, we pray that “ . . . Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; . . . where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. . . .” (Prayer of St. Francis.)
Lewis Munoz
Grand Knight, Council 953