CNEWA board member Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre has been traveling with Cardinal Timothy Dolan and the CNEWA team during the pastoral visit to Iraq. This morning, he posted some of his impressions on the web page for Long Island Catholic:
Sunday was a long day but filled with moments that touched our hearts. In the town of Dohuk, Catholic Near East (CNEWA) built, equipped and funds a dispensary that serves refugees from Syria and displaced person (IDP) from within Iraq. The doctors and staff nurses and pharmacists are first rate. The people are the victims of ISIS, which here is called Daesh. The hope they all expressed was to go home and rebuild their lives.
At the two refugee camps we visited we heard the same hope time and time again. One camp was the creation of local Christian groups with help from CNEWA and other Catholic agencies. A second was a government of Kurdistan initiative that included Muslims, Yzidis and Christians. The Christians would take my pectoral cross, kiss it and place it momentarily on their foreheads.
This same gesture was repeated after the Mass we concelebrated in the Chaldean Rite in the village of Inishke. The refugees participated in the liturgy and we shared a meal with them after. They were so proud of being able to offer us a true banquet from their limited means and it was delicious.