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A Nun's Message of Hope
Assyrian Catholic nun Sister Olga Yaqob
addresses the Roman Catholic Diocese of Trenton's annual Youth
Conference at Georgian Court University on Sunday.
LAKEWOOD - Sister Olga Yaqob was 13
years old when war broke out between her native Iraq and neighboring
Iran in 1980 - a war that would last for eight years and kill
a total of 1.5 million on both sides.
The Assyrian Catholic nun recalled the
horrific conditions that marked those times. She spoke about
how, as a teenager, she was forced to tend to the injured and
dead and how those experiences shaped her decision to become
a nun.
At Georgian Court University on Sunday,
Yaqob, 37, addressed about 400 teenagers at the Roman Catholic
Diocese of Trenton's annual Youth Conference.
Yaqob was the keynote speaker. In her
powder-blue habit and white wimple, standing 4 feet 9 inches
tall, she bears striking physical resemblance to a young Mother
Theresa. In fact, her order of The Missionaries of the Virgin
Mary is often mistaken for the late Mother Theresa's Missionaries
of Charity because of the similarities in dress.
Yaqob spoke for more than an hour, taking
questions from the teens. Her message centered around a theme
of Jesus commanding the stone protecting Lazarus's tomb to move,
so Lazarus could be resurrected, according to the Bible's Book
of John, Chapter 11, verses 1 to 44.
Yaqob expounded on the biblical story,
saying there are stones blocking the happiness of all men and
women, but those stones can be moved through faith in Jesus Christ.
"I hope that you remember this
day, March 13, 2005, when this little Iraqi nun came here from
darkness to tell you that there is hope . . . and there is so
much to be done," Yaqob said.
Ellie Ancrum, diocesan director of black
apostolate and secretary for ethnic ministries, who lives in
Red Bank, said she was touched by Yaqob's remarks.
"We have no idea, it's beyond our
ability to understand what she has been through," Ancrum
said, after listening to Yaqob's address.
"I thought it was very inspirational
and very interesting, what she had to say," said Anthony
Gallo, 16, of Hazlet, who worships at Keyport Holy Family Church.
"It makes you feel good about yourself. No matter what the
situation, no matter how bad it is, you always have to have hope."
"I thought it was inspiring,"
agreed Brianna Mannuccia, 16, of North Hanover, who worships
at New Egypt of Assumption in Plumsted.
Around the time of the first Gulf War
in 1991, at age 23, Yaqob began to feel an increasing desire
to devote her life to Christ's teachings, but she said that devotion
began to alienate her parents, whose cultural values didn't always
match their religious views. They had already promised Yaqob's
hand in marriage to another family.
But there was no other room in her heart
for any other man but Jesus, she said, and her convictions resulted
in her being forced to leave home. She lived as a refugee in
the Iraqi desert, a Catholic in a Muslim nation where only three
percent of the population's 25.3 million inhabitants are Christian.
When most of her family, including her
parents fled to Jordan after the war, she stayed behind and became
a nun in order to tend to those who would become victims of 12
years of sanctions.
"I still have family in Iraq,"
she said, fighting back tears. "I pray every day that no
one will be kidnapped, my nieces or my sisters. I pray every
day for the troops there, that they will return to their loved
ones. You might think because of my nationality, that I think
of myself as an Iraqi, but I count America as my country too."
Sometime after becoming a nun in 1995,
Yaqob received permission from the Assyrian Catholic Church to
start her own order in Baghdad, where she was already leading
a service-oriented religious outreach called Love Thy Neighbor,
which sought to address some of the needs that resulted from
Western sanctions, said Lois Rogers, a spokeswoman for Trenton
diocese.
In 1997, Yaqob visited and comforted
prisoners at the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison, which at the
time, was being used by Saddam Hussein's regime to crush political
dissent.
Currently, Yaqob is working on a graduate
degree in theology at Boston University and volunteers as chaplain
at the Catholic Center there, Rogers said.
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