This year, we are encouraging our friends around the world to support CNEWA’s education programs — and, as one example of that, we’re turning a spotlight on the Dbayeh Refugee Camp in Lebanon. There, a small group of heroic sisters is helping minister to thousands of displaced men, women and children. The Little Sisters of Nazareth are providing healing and help to so many who have seen their lives torn apart by war. We profiled the sisters several years ago in the pages of our magazine:
The Little Sisters of Nazareth have had a family of three nuns stationed in Lebanon since 1971. Sister Anita and Sister Rosa have served for four years, while Sister Joanna arrived a year ago, though she has long experience in Lebanon. Based first in Jisr el Basha, the sisters left Lebanon briefly for the safety of Jordan after the camp was razed in 1976. But in 1978, the Pontifical Mission [CNEWA’s operating agency in the Middle East] approached the sisters and, to ease their return, offered living quarters in Dbayeh.
With CNEWA’s support, the Little Sisters began their work at the camp in 1984.
“There were no other organizations working here,” Sister Joanna said. Since then they have been joined by several aid organizations, including World Vision and Caritas Lebanon. Through CNEWA, benefactors have sponsored many of the camp’s needy children and also fund educational programs, emergency health care and even infrastructure repair, such as sheathing the camp’s open sewers.
The sisters trace their roots to Blessed Charles de Foucauld, the French mystic and hermit who lived humbly in the Sahara desert and prayed to God, “I abandon myself into your hands, do with me what you will.” He desired to live among those who were “the most abandoned.” Today, this little band of heroic sisters continues to live out that spirit of sacrifice and surrender among the displaced in Lebanon — and CNEWA is proud to support them in their mission.