[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 17154-17155]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       A TIMELY CALL TO ACTION ON BEHALF OF THE PERSECUTED CHURCH

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FRANK R. WOLF

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, November 14, 2013

  Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I submit Cardinal Timothy Dolan's remarks at 
the annual U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) gathering in 
which he gave an impassioned plea for the church in the West to focus 
on the increasingly dire plight of the persecuted church around the 
globe.
  I venture that the Catholic bishop under house arrest in China, the 
imperiled believer in Iraq still reeling from the devastating attack on 
Our Lady of Salvation Church and the unjustly imprisoned Christian in 
Pakistan will undoubtedly be heartened by his words and buoyed by his 
call to action.

  Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York, President of the 
              U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)


       Address to the USCCB General Assembly on November 11, 2013

       Just last August, I had the honor of concelebrating the 
     Mass of Dedication for the Cathedral of the Resurrection in 
     Kiev. A particularly moving moment came when Metropolitan 
     Shevchuk asked the Lord's protective hand upon believers 
     suffering persecution for their faith anywhere in the world. 
     That such a heartfelt plea came from a people who had 
     themselves been oppressed for so long made it all the more 
     poignant.
       This morning I want to invite us to broaden our horizons, 
     to ``think Catholic'' about our brothers and sisters in the 
     faith now suffering simply because they sign themselves with 
     the cross, bow their heads at the Holy Name of Jesus, and 
     happily profess the Apostles' Creed.
       Brother bishops, our legitimate and ongoing struggles to 
     protect our ``first and most cherished freedom'' in the 
     United States pale in comparison to the Via Crucis currently 
     being walked by so many of our Christian brothers and sisters 
     in other parts of the world, who are experiencing lethal 
     persecution on a scale that defies belief. If our common 
     membership in the mystical body of Christ is to mean 
     anything, then their suffering must be ours as well. The new 
     Archbishop of Canterbury has rightly referred to victims of 
     Christian persecution as ``martyrs.'' We are living in what 
     must be recognized as, in the words of Blessed John Paul II, 
     ``a new age of martyrs.'' One expert calculates that half of 
     all Christian martyrs were killed in the twentieth century 
     alone. The twenty-first century has already seen in its first 
     13 years one million people killed around the world because 
     of their belief in Jesus Christ--one million already in this 
     still young century.
       That threat to religious believers is growing. The Pew 
     Research Center reports that 75 percent of the world's 
     population ``lives in countries where governments, social 
     groups, or individuals restrict people's ability to freely 
     practice their faith.'' Pew lays out the details of this 
     ``rising tide of restrictions on religion,'' but we don't 
     need a report to tell us something we sadly see on the news 
     every day.
       While Muslims and Christians have long lived peacefully 
     side-by-side in Zanzibar, for instance, this past year has 
     seen increasing violence. Catholic churches have been burned 
     and priests have been shot. In September one priest was the 
     victim of a horrific acid attack. Nigeria has also been the 
     site of frequent anti-Christian violence, including church 
     bombings on our holiest days.
       The situation in India has also been grave, particularly 
     after the Orissa massacre of 2008, where hundreds of 
     Christians were murdered and thousands displaced, and 
     thousands of homes and some 400 churches were torched. Just 
     recently, a Christian couple was recently attacked by an 
     angry mob just because of their faith, their Bibles torn from 
     their hands.
       We remember our brothers and sisters in China, where 
     Catholic bishops and other religious leaders are subject to 
     state supervision and imprisonment. Conditions are only 
     getting worse, as the government closes churches and subjects 
     members of several faiths to forced renunciations, so-called 
     re-education, and torture.
       Of course, it's not just Christians who suffer from 
     religious persecution, but believers in other faiths as well. 
     Much religious persecution is committed by Muslims against 
     other Muslims. Buddhists in Tibet suffer under government 
     torture and repression. In Myanmar Muslims suffer at the 
     hands of Buddhist mobs. All of us share apprehension over 
     reports of rising anti-Semitism.
       But there is no escaping the fact that Christians are 
     singled out in far more places and far more often.

[[Page 17155]]

       I don't have to tell anyone in this room that our brothers 
     and sisters in the Middle East face particular trials. As 
     Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has observed, for 
     Christians in the Middle East, ``even the simple admission of 
     Christian identity places the very existence of [the] 
     faithful in daily threat . . . Exceptionally extreme and 
     expansive occurrences of violence and persecution against 
     Christians cannot leave the rest of us--who are blessed to 
     live peacefully and in some sense of security--indifferent 
     and inactive.''
       The humanitarian catastrophe that continues to unfold in 
     Syria has been particularly close to our hearts these past 
     few months. We've prayed for and stood in solidarity with the 
     Church and the people of Syria, and with Pope Francis and the 
     bishops of the Middle East in their call for peace.
       It's no surprise that this violent and chaotic situation 
     has bred even more religious persecution. Of course we're all 
     familiar with Syria's venerable history as the place from 
     which our faith spread to the rest of the world, and Syria 
     has long been home to a sizable Christian minority. Yet those 
     Christians who have remained in Syria face ever-present, 
     rising threats of violence.
       Last April two of our Orthodox brother bishops were 
     kidnapped in Aleppo by gunmen as they returned from a 
     humanitarian mission. Their driver was shot and killed. And a 
     little less than a year ago an Orthodox priest from Hama was 
     killed by a sniper while helping the wounded. Similarly 
     tragic violence against believers is now commonplace.
       Just as Syrian Christians have suffered from the war raging 
     in their land, the war in Iraq has devastated that ancient 
     Christian community in that country as well. As Bishop 
     Shlemon Warduni of Iraq tearfully told us during our spring 
     assembly in 2012, remember, the situation of Christians there 
     ``became a tragedy of immense proportions after 2003,'' with 
     many religious and lay faithful tortured and killed.
       Violent attacks continue to terrorize the Iraqi people. 
     Just a little over a year ago the war's worst massacre of 
     Iraqi Christians occurred in a brutal attack on Our Lady of 
     Salvation Church in Baghdad, where some 58 believers were 
     massacred. Those martyred for their faith included their 
     parish priest who died holding a crucifix, forgiving the 
     gunmen and asking him to spare his people.
       The situations in Syria and Iraq wrench our hearts, but the 
     plight of Christians in Egypt is no better. This past summer 
     saw the serious escalation of violence against our brothers 
     and sisters there, as the ancient Coptic Christian community 
     has been targeted. Dozens of Coptic churches have been 
     burned; Christian-owned businesses and hotels have been 
     attacked; and individual believers have been murdered.
       To take one example, John Allen reports that in August, 
     ``hundreds of Muslim extremists stormed a school run by 
     Franciscan sisters in . . . Upper Egypt, where they 
     reportedly raped two teachers. Three nuns were paraded before 
     the crowd as prisoners of war.'' It was only through the 
     intervention of a Muslim lay teacher that other sisters' 
     lives were spared.
       We as bishops, as shepherds of one of the most richly 
     blessed communities of faith on the planet, as pastors who 
     have spoken with enthusiastic unity in defense of our own 
     religious freedom, must become advocates and champions for 
     these Christians whose lives literally hang in the balance.
       Pope Francis recently invited us all to an examination of 
     conscience in this regard during his General Audience on 
     September 25:

       ``When I hear that so many Christians in the world are 
     suffering, am I indifferent, or is it as if a member of my 
     own family is suffering? When I think or hear it said that 
     many Christians are persecuted and give their lives for their 
     faith, does this touch my heart or does it not reach me? Am I 
     open to that brother or that sister in my family who's giving 
     his or her life for Jesus Christ? Do we pray for one 
     another'? How many of you pray for Christians who are 
     persecuted? How many? Everyone respond in his own heart. It's 
     important to look beyond one's own fence, to feel oneself 
     part of the Church, of one family of God!''

       I am convinced that we have to answer those questions of 
     Pope Francis, not merely as individual believers, but 
     collectively as a body of bishops.
       So you ask me, what can we do? Without any pretense of 
     being exhaustive, here are some ideas I'd like to lay before 
     you, with a nod to John Allen and his recent compelling work 
     on this topic.
       First, we can encourage intercession for the persecuted. 
     Remember how the ``prayers for the conversion of Russia'' at 
     the end of Masses over a half-century ago shaped our sense of 
     what was going on behind the Iron Curtain? A similar culture 
     of prayer for persecuted Christians today, both in private 
     and in our liturgical celebrations, could have a similar 
     remedial effect.
       We can also make people aware of the great suffering of our 
     brothers and sisters with all the means at our disposal. Our 
     columns, our blogs, our speeches, and our pastoral letters 
     can reference the subject. We can ask our pastors to preach 
     on it, and to stimulate study sessions or activist groups in 
     their parishes. We can encourage our Catholic media to tell 
     the stories of today's new martyrs, unfortunately abundant. 
     Our good experience defending religious freedom here at home 
     shows that, when we turn our minds to an issue, we can put it 
     on the map. Well, it's time to harness that energy for our 
     fellow members of the household of faith hounded for their 
     beliefs around the world.
       We know the importance of supporting organizations such as 
     Aid to the Church in Need, the Catholic Near East Welfare 
     Association, Catholic Relief Services, and the Society for 
     the Propagation of the Faith, who have done heroic work, 
     while among our Protestant brothers and sisters groups such 
     as Open Doors make a similar contribution. Writers such as 
     Nina Shea, Paul Marshall, John Allen, and Phillip Jenkins 
     here in the United States help keep the issue alive, as does 
     our own Committee on International Justice and Peace.
       Finally, we can insist that our country's leaders make the 
     protection of at-risk Christians abroad a foreign-policy 
     priority for the United States. We can also cajole political 
     leaders to be more attentive to the voices of Christians on 
     the ground, since those Christians will certainly feel the 
     consequences of whatever the West does or doesn't do. As Dr. 
     Thomas Farr reminded us at our spring meeting a couple 
     summers ago, the protection of religious freedom abroad, and 
     advocacy of oppressed believers, has hardly been a high 
     foreign policy priority for administrations of either party.
       In general, my brothers, we can make supporting the 
     suffering Church a priority--not one good cause among others, 
     but a defining element of our pastoral priorities. As 
     historians of this conference know, speaking up for suffering 
     faithful abroad has been a hallmark of our soon-to-be-century 
     of public advocacy of the gospel by the conference of bishops 
     in this beloved country we are honored to call our earthly 
     home.
       Protecting religious freedom will be a central social and 
     political concern of our time, and we American bishops 
     already have made very important contributions to carrying it 
     forward. Now we are being beckoned--by history, by Pope 
     Francis, by the force of our own logic and the ecclesiology 
     of communion--to extend those efforts to the dramatic front 
     lines of this battle, where Christians are paying for their 
     fidelity with their lives. As the Council reminded us, we are 
     bishops not only for our dioceses, not only for our nation, 
     but for the Church universal.
       May all the blessed martyrs, ancient and new, pray for us, 
     as we try to be confessors of the faith.
       Praise be Jesus Christ!

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