Mar Musa monastery reopens for pilgrims and visitors

Jun 24, 2022

SYRIA: After years of isolation due to war and COVID-19, Syria’s Deir Mar Musa Al Habashi monastery has reopened its doors to pilgrims and visitors.

In the 1990s, Jesuit Fr Paolo Dall’Oglio turned the ancient monastic compound nestled between the mountains and the desert, almost a 100 kilometres north of Damascus, into a centre for dialogue between Islam and Christianity.

“This is an important sign,” said Abbot Br Jihad Youssef. “For many Syrians, the abbey represents a spiritual oasis of peace and friendship for people from different religious backgrounds.”

The monastery is one of the oldest in Syria, with precious frescoes and preserved wall inscriptions in Arabic, Syriac and Greek, as well as a church from the 11th century.

After civil war broke out in 2011, fierce fighting between opposition groups and government forces engulfed the nearby town of al-Nabek. Between 2015 and 2017, the Islamic State group took control of a nearby region, which was followed by a wave of kidnappings of Christian residents.

For local Christians however, the hardest blow came with the disappearance in 2013, of Father Dall’Oglio, who went missing in the jihadi-controlled Raqqa area. The clergyman has not been heard of or seen, ever since.

His spirit, however, lives on, stronger than ever, within the ancient stone walls, where silence is broken only by the chants of the monks during the hours of prayer.

In such a place of fraternity between faiths and people, “There is no internet connection,” said Abbot Youssef. “Our guests can enjoy a break from the hectic life of the city, and devote themselves to the encounter with God, with themselves and with us, in a climate of friendship that overcomes religious differences,” he explained.

Here, a “prophecy of a global friendship” is particularly poignant amid a still harsh daily reality. Fighting might have ceased, but “people here survive rather than live. We are going through a deep economic crisis, our currency is no longer worth anything, work is precarious and poorly paid, and the prices of everything is skyrocketing.”

Yet, despite an atmosphere of great discouragement, locals have greeted with great joy the news that the monastery was going to reopen to outside visitors.

From the beginning, the ties with creation and care for the environment represent one of Deir Mar Musa’s peculiarities. The monks and nuns work the land and follow projects to enhance local biodiversity, while guests can share in the manual work while finding time to reflect and take advantage of the large library.

In recent years, the community has been closely involved in helping the displaced and the poor, in and around al-Nabek, as well as the Governorate of Homs, where the monastery of Mar Elian is located. --AsiaNews