Scottish Catholic Observer

This was the message to Scotland from a heroic Syrian nun who tends to the wounded of Aleppo.

Sr Annie Demerjian leads a team of volunteers who go house to house helping sick and elderly people trapped in war-torn Aleppo, where the population has plummeted by upwards of 60 per cent since conflict began in March 2011.

She was speaking in Paisley last week at an event organised by Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, who support her work in Syria.

Fighting in and around the city of Aleppo, formerly Syria’s largest has been among the fiercest of the brutal Syrian Civil War. A series of sieges and counter sieges have left half a million people trapped in the city with no hope of escape. The United Nations estimate that tens of thousands have died in Aleppo since the war began five years ago.

“Aleppo is divided into east and west,” Sr Demerjian told the SCO. “But all of its people are suffering. It’s beginning to be a burden now to continue, just to face every day. You hear bombs or shells or rockets and you hold your life in fear.”

She said a bomb had landed near her last year and she had thought it was her ‘last moment to live.’

“We are in danger in Aleppo every moment,” she said. “We don’t know when the bombs will fall but we are putting our lives, our work, in God’s hands. That’s how we keep going.”

Thinking back to before the war, she said it seems like another world.

“Aleppo was always a great commercial city. The young people would be out at restaurants every night, enjoying themselves… It was a very different life. Now we are just afraid. So many have left, especially the Christians.”

Sr Demerjian passionately thanked all those who had supported her work through ACN. “In the name of hundreds of families and children, we say thank you because you have entered the houses and the hearts of many,” she said.

“Because you have fed hundreds of hungry families, because you provide warmth to those who feel cold, because hundreds of pairs of shoes protect hundreds of children from the harsh winter, because, through you, we can heal many wounded people.”

She also urged those in the West not to give up and keep praying for peace in Alleppo.

“Please pray,” she said. “Prayer can make miracles, so ask the Lord to make a miracle that peace will some soon. There is always hope. Every day we hope the clouds will go, the sun will appear and a new light will come, but we need peace.”

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—This story ran in full in the October 21 edition print of the SCO, available in parishes.