Syria: two Christian schools reopen after sixty years shut

In two Christian villages of the Orontes valley, at Al-Quniya and Yacoubieh, in the governorate of Idlib in north-west Syria, the two «Schools of the Holy Land» have reopened their doors after nearly sixty years of closure imposed by the Baath party and the regime of the Assad family. The authorities had shut them because they refused the method the regime meant to impose on them. They are to welcome some eighty Christian children, with the aim of admitting pupils of other confessions in the years to come.

The inauguration drew a crowd and many Franciscan friars, alongside the apostolic nuncio to Syria, Archbishop Luigi Roberto Cona, the Custos of the Holy Land, Father Francesco Ielpo, the governor of Idlib, Muhammad Abdul Rahman, and two ministers of the Syrian transitional government. The rebuilding was overseen by the friars Luai Bisharat and Khoukaz Masroub. Reports place the ceremony on 19 or 20 September.

Bishop Hanna Jallouf, apostolic vicar of Aleppo of the Latins, saw in it «an event that gives us strength, courage and hope for the future of Syria», and «an image of the Syria we have always wanted, a country for all its sons». The Custos of the Holy Land declared: «Today we are not only inaugurating two schools. Today we are helping to reopen the way of return, of life and of hope.» And again: «Education is one of the most important paths to building peace.»

What the Church has always held

Christ did not found one school among many: he gave his Church the mandate to teach. «Euntes ergo docete omnes gentes», «Going therefore, teach ye all nations» (Mt 28:19). And of those the world counts for nothing, the little ones, he said: «Sinite parvulos venire ad me», «Suffer the little children to come to me» (Mt 19:14). To instruct the child in the true faith is not an accessory work: it is a grave duty. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, expounding the fourth commandment, ranks among the obligations of those who hold the place of parents that of forming children in Christian doctrine and in the fear of God.

The measure

To reopen a house where Christian children will be raised in the faith of their fathers is a good, and we say so plainly. Yet a school is Catholic only by what it teaches, not by its rebuilt walls. The Father Custos is right to say that education builds peace, on one condition the tradition makes precise: peace is «the tranquillity of order» (St Augustine, The City of God, XIX, 13), and there is no order in a soul that is not ordered to God. An instruction that formed scholars without forming Christians would give back the walls without giving back the reason for raising them.

For the faithful

Let us rejoice at this return, and let us support the Christian presence in the East, so often reduced to silence. But let us also hold to what this return is worth: the end of a Catholic school is not to prepare for a trade nor to please a power, but to lead the little ones to Him who calls them. It is by this that a reopening is measured, and not by the number of dignitaries present.

Sources. Gospel according to St Matthew, XXVIII, 19 and XIX, 14 (Douay-Rheims, from the Vulgate). Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fourth commandment. St Augustine, The City of God, book XIX, chapter 13.