GAZA Sister Nabila: Gaza, where faith is stronger than bombs

Yesterday at the Pime Center in Milan the testimony of the nun who lived through the brutality of the Strip for six months. A “sudden” war, with violence greater than that of the past that has caused “the veil of human rights to fall.” The Christian victims, the destruction of the Rosary Sisters school. The challenge of meeting children who in their lives have only known conflict and have developed strong aggressiveness.

Milan () – Faith and hope “have never failed”, even in the “terrible days” when the Israeli army “bombed near us”, near the parish of the Holy Family, with people from the community “wounds from shrapnel” that could not be treated “because there was a lack of hospitals and medicines.” This is what Sister Nabila Saleh, a nun of Egyptian origin from the Sisters of the Rosary, tells , who experienced firsthand the conflict between the Jewish State and Hamas in Gaza, and who only managed to leave the Strip at the beginning of April with a group of parishioners. Terrible moments such as the attack on the Greek Orthodox church of Saint Porphyry: “We immediately ran to check on them,” he recalls, “because we all know each other as Christians. And also when [los francotiradores israelíes] they killed the two women before our eyes… I myself helped the daughter-in-law to recover the old woman’s body, and then we waited from noon until four in the afternoon before we could also recover the second body.

Unlike previous wars in the Strip, which took place over a shorter period of time and with less intensity, this time “it came suddenly, nothing foreshadowed it, and no place could be considered safe. This time,” says the nun, “they attacked everywhere.” The Israeli leaders “knew that Christians were displaced within the churches and it was a shock” to realize that we were not immune to the attacks, to the bombs: ” We did not believe it would happen, like when they entered Zeitoun with tanks [el barrio donde se encuentra la parroquia latina] and, behind them, there were snipers deliberately attacking.

Sister Nabila Saleh lived in Gaza for 13 years and saw firsthand the violence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although the intensity of the war unleashed by the Hamas attack on October 7 is unparalleled in the past. The nun spent more than six months taking refuge in the Church of the Holy Family along with more than 650 displaced Christians, under bombs and in desperate humanitarian conditions, taking care of the most fragile. Yesterday afternoon she recounted her experience at the PIME Center in Milan together with some sisters, among them Sister Bertilla Murj and Sister Martina Bader, Jordanians, who have worked in the Strip for a long time in the past. This morning, in a private meeting, she also received from the Archbishop of Milan, Monsignor Mario Delpini, the “Fuoco Inside” award promoted by the Ambrosian Church for “Women and Men Who Change the World.”

The “faith” shown by everyone was “the source of our hope: during the bombing we went to church and prayed the rosary, with people shouting, crying and praying” without knowing if they would survive. “For me,” he continues, “they were very hard months” in which he learned that “nothing in the world is worth anything, only the Lord. Neither the riches, nor the possessions of which nothing remains. Through them, I tried to represent the faith that comes from the Lord, to have hope, even though I myself was afraid and cried. The value of life is even greater ‘when you see around you corpses and devastation everywhere, people buried, others dying from lack of care’ even from diseases that could easily be solved elsewhere.

Among those who suffer are, above all, children, as confirmed by the nun whose order founded a popular school in Gaza among the entire community, which is attended mainly by Muslim families and in which Hamas leaders themselves have enrolled their children. «The children have lived through five wars in a few years and bear the consequences. Think of a 10-year-old child,” says Sister Nabila, “who has only known violence. We found a lot of aggression at school, which is why we have launched educational programs to try to tackle this problem. During these months of war, we have tried to make them play, despite the horrors. “The Sisters of the Rosary school itself suffered serious damage in the bombing, at least three million dollars will be needed just to repair the walls, among the 37,000 victims of the conflict there are three teachers. and several students from the school. “In the parish we tried to organize classes, but it was impossible due to the intensity of the attacks. What future,” Sister Nabila asks, “can we imagine for these children?…”

The nun left the Strip at the beginning of April, along with a group of Christians, traveling from Gaza City to the Rafah border crossing, not without risks and dangers for her own safety. “They were very hard months, at first only the King of Jordan had sent any help from heaven and our young people risked their lives to get it back.” Among the few moments of joy and comfort was the visit of Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa and the return of the parish priest Fr. Gabriel Romanelli in mid-May, although “the vice-parish priest Fr. Yousef Asad did a great job.” «Certainly, the presence of the cardinal – the nun stressed – was very important, because seeing that the head of the Church, even in these difficult times, has the courage to visit them is a source of grace and instills courage where the desire for peace prevails. flee”.

Asked about the demands made today by the population of Gaza, Sister Nabila affirms with conviction: “Peace!” «It is very difficult to always live in war. “We have missed the voices that really work for peace.” Pope Francis “always asks for it, but the powerful have not done it. All Gazans say that with this war the veil of human rights has fallen. Both peoples have the right to live in peace” and the hope is that “this war will close the book of all wars.” People – the nun concludes – today do not think about Hamas or Al Fatah. “They think about how to live tomorrow, how to feed their children.”