Reconciliation and hope in crisis zones

Christmas this year was marked by some remarkable gestures of reconciliation or solidarity in countries afflicted by bitter tensions.

In his 1 January World Day of Peace message, Pope Francis acknowledged that “war and terrorism, accompanied by kidnapping, ethnic or religious persecution and the misuse of power”, marked 2015 from start to finish. “In many parts of the world, these have became so common as to constitute a real “third world war fought piecemeal”, he said. He asked everyone to take stock of the way “indifference represents a menace to the human family”. In his Christmas “Urbi et Orbi” message Francis called for peace in the Middle East and sub-saharan Africa saying that God’s mercy can bring about a solution to the most intractable of conflicts. “Where God is born, peace is born,” the Pope said on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica.

After northern Nigeria experienced the bombing of churches by Islamist terrorists on Christmas Day 2011 Christians have been fearful, but this year the city of Kaduna saw around 150 Muslim youths and imams join Christians for a Christmas Day service in an evangelical church. Muslims provided security outside, and inter-faith prayers were offered for religious tolerance. Muslim women brought food to more than 500 Christian inmates in Kaduna prison “to join Christians in celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ”.

In northern Kenya a year ago Islamist terrorists shot dead 28 bus passengers who failed to recite verses from the Qur’an. However, on 21 December, during a similar ambush on a bus carrying more than 100 passengers near the Somalia border, Muslims shielded Christians. Women gave their hijabs to around 12 Christian passengers and told the gunmen trying to single out Christians that they should kill them all or leave them alone. One Christian man was killed as he tried to escape.

In some French cities, local Muslim associations formed symbolic security patrols outside churches on Christmas Eve in a gesture of solidarity. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve praised the gesture, but a leading politician of the far-right National Front denounced it as “a foretaste of the Lebanonisation of France”.

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad visited a Melkite Catholic church in Damascus before Christmas. He and his wife Asma spoke to parishioners of Our Lady of Damascus, in a suburb that has been hit by rebel missiles.

In Jordan, King Abdullah II underlined that Arab Christians “are an integral part of our past, present and future”. In a televised speech on 22 December he said they “have been an essential partner in building our culture and civilisation and defending Islam”.

In India, Christians and political commentators were taken aback when the elderly Kummanam Rajasekharan, the Hindu nationalist BJP’s president of Kerala, fell at the feet of Cardinal Baselios mar Cleemis, head of the Catholic Church in India, while greeting him for Christmas.

In China, thawing of relations with the Vatican continued with news that Rome has approved a locally elected bishop in southwestern China. Bishop-designate Tang Yuange of Chengdu will be ordained this year.  

However, many tensions remained. The plight of Christian refugees in Iraq was highlighted on Christmas Day when the head of the Chaldean Church opened a Door of Mercy in a tent that functions as a chapel for about 1,000 Christians in a Baghdad refugee camp. Patriarch Louis Raphaël I declined traditional Christmas greetings with politicians and other religious leaders, saying it would gloss over the sufferings of Iraqi Christians.

Brunei and Somalia banned all Christmas celebrations, saying their countries’ Muslim faith would be damaged by them.