Special to The Michigan Catholic | Doreen Abi Raad

Beirut — Three U.S. Dominican sisters visiting displaced Christians in Iraqi Kurdistan encountered a witness of service and deep faith.

They had traveled to Iraq on a mission of solidarity with the Iraqi Dominicans, who are among the more than 100,000 Christians uprooted from their homes last summer by the advances of Islamic State militants.

Now these displaced sisters — belonging to the Mosul-based order of Dominicans of St. Catherine of Siena — are administering to the tens of thousands still homeless, mostly dwelling in tents, half-finished buildings and containers in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The three Americans — Sr. Durstyne “Dusty” Farnan, OP, of Adrian, Mich.; Sr. Marcelline Koch, OP, of Springfield, Ill.; and Arlene Flaherty, OP, of Blauvelt, N.Y. — spoke via Skype from Iraq before completing their Jan. 5-15 visit to Irbil and Dohuk, which are hosting most of the internally displaced Iraqis.

They recalled “very, very sad faces”; small, metal housing units almost as cold as meat freezers; two to three families crammed into single rooms; and, because of sporadic electricity, an eerie darkness enveloping interiors of chilly concrete buildings housing the displaced.

“I’m still trying to get my head around what it means to have lost your home, your culture, a place to belong, your community — everything,” said Sr. Koch. “That sense of loss is just huge. And being here has helped me to feel that much more.”

Christians from Qaraqosh, for example, came from what would be considered the upper middle class by American standards. They were educated professionals – doctors, lawyers, business owners – who lived in very large homes.

Contents of their homes are even being sold at “robber’s markets” near their dwellings in Kurdistan. A displaced man from Qaraqosh received a menacing “business” call on his cell phone: “I’m standing here in the middle of your store. What do you think about that? I’m selling your things.”

It seems there is not the capacity to protect their cities and villages, the sisters said, and any place that the Islamic State has left, it has booby-trapped with mines.

“ISIS is not far from here” the sisters said of Kurdistan, noting that on Jan. 10 the Islamic State was about 25 miles southwest of their location.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of displaced children are still not getting an education. The Iraqi sisters would like to establish a school for the displaced. They are prepared educationally and professionally to do that, the U.S. Dominican sisters stressed — they just need the financial support.

The U.S. sisters, who documented their visit on Facebook, called their mission “I Have Family in Iraq.”

It’s a reflection of the close relationship North American Dominicans have shared with their Iraqi counterparts since 1999 when the first delegation of U.S. Dominicans traveled to Iraq, Sr. Flaherty among them. Since then, nine of the Iraqi sisters have lived among the U.S. Dominicans; four of them have received advanced degrees.

Even though the Iraqi sisters were uprooted and suffer from their losses, they are still a witness of the Church, the U.S. sisters stressed.

On Aug. 6, the prioress of the Iraqi Dominicans, Sr. Maria Hanna, OP, had told her sisters they had the opportunity to leave their Mosul motherhouse early, before conditions got worse.

The sisters replied they wanted to stay as long as possible, but as some of the neighboring Christians evacuated, the sisters began to receive phone calls. The calls were from fellow Christians, warning that if they didn’t leave immediately, they would be under attack from ISIS.

Sr. Hanna told the sisters to pack and be ready to leave for Irbil in 15 minutes. They left and stayed for a short period at a local seminary, later arriving in Irbil with little else than the clothes on their backs and a few personal possessions.

“Their faith is so deep. They have no (prayer) books in front of them. They know it by heart. Usually the expression ‘know it by heart’ means only memory. But when I say by heart, I mean they are praying from the depths of their heart,” Sr. Farnan recounted of the Masses the three sisters attended with the displaced, and vespers with their Dominican counterparts.

Throughout their visit the U.S. sisters listened, watched and took notes in preparation for their advocacy efforts when they return home. They also had a meeting at the U.S. consulate in Irbil.

“We plan to really raise the awareness of the American people about the situation of displacement of these IDPs (internally displaced persons) in Iraq, the crisis unfolding here and the conditions in which they are living,” said Sr. Flaherty. “We will appeal to our government to do everything they can to address this crisis more systematically, to resource it as well as possible and to look at motivating the central governments of Iraq to take responsibility for their own people here.”

The day after her return to Michigan, Sr. Farnan told The Michigan Catholic the story of Sr. Luma Khuder, OP.

As the Iraqi sister led the U.S. sisters through one of the mobile units serving as a home for herself and her fellow IDPs, a woman called out to her. The woman approached Sr. Khuder and said, “Sister, I am your aunt.”

“Luma was so shocked that her aunt was living there,” said Sr. Farnan, explaining that the aunt had run out of money for rent at her own apartment, and had been a resident of the mobile unit for months before encountering her niece.

Sr. Farnan said she personally did not feel unsafe while staying in Iraq, “but that didn’t mean things weren’t happening.”

But still, “it is not my country, it’s the sisters’ country. It’s all they’ve known. They feel so terribly vulnerable right now.”

— Elizabeth Wong Barnstead contributed to this report.

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Rosary novena

Bishop Francis Kalabat of the Southfield-based Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle has requested Catholics around the world to participate in a nine-day rosary novena from Jan. 25 to Feb. 2, to pray for persecuted Christians in the Middle East. For updates, visit helpiraq.org.