A video interview with Sister Judith Zoebelein, who is the director of the Vatican website (the interview is about 25 minutes long)
Tibhirine, Algeria: Monks may return to Algeria for the first time in a decade to reopen a monastery closed after the 1996 murder of seven Trappists at the height of the country’s civil war, a French cardinal said on Tuesday.
"We must pray that this succeeds," Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon told reporters during a visit to the graves of the seven Frenchmen at Our Lady of Atlas monastery, set amid wine growing hills near Medea, 70km south of Algiers.
"There are plans for the re-establishment of a community here. … There have been attempts in the past 11 years, which came to nothing. But now there is a new attempt."
Algeria plunged into violence after its military cancelled an election in 1992 that a radical Islamic party was poised to win. More than 200,000 people were killed in ensuing fighting.
The seven monks were among several Trappists who decided to stay on at the monastery in Tibhirine village despite threats against them by militants.
They were abducted from the monastery on March 26 and killed two months later. Guerrillas of the Armed Islamic Group said they had slit their throats after Paris refused to negotiate a release of Islamist detainees of Algerian extraction.
More on the Monks of Tibhirine
After the service, parishioners gathered in the reception hall to sign letters of appeal for Iraqi refugee aid and shared story after story of families fleeing atrocities, of being scattered around the world. Nearly 70% of the church’s 500-member Sunday congregation are of Iraqi descent, according to Pastor Vazken Movsesian.
Noobar Zadoian, 32, trained as a computer programmer, said he arrived in Glendale two months ago after too many bombings, murders and kidnappings made him lose hope in his country’s future. His elderly father remains alone in Jordan, where he had gone in late 2003 to say goodbye to another son who was leaving for the U.S. The father ended up staying in Jordan because the situation in Iraq had begun to deteriorate too badly to risk returning.
Another parishioner said a relative was stoned as he walked down a formerly peaceful neighborhood street because his sister had married an American.
"You guys have to leave; this is not your country anymore," she said he was told.
"Armenians have been caught right in the middle," Movsesian said. "We were a respected class as a Christian minority in Iraq. Now, Armenians are left without homes and nobody wants them."
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