![]() ![]() The Sacred Heart Church of Hodeidah is hidden from view, the ground floor of a nondescript, three-storey building with shuttered white windows. While the rebels and government alliance have agreed to a ceasefire, the truce is shaky at best. Hodeidah was, for months, the main front in the Yemen war after government forces supported by Saudi Arabia and its allies launched an offensive to capture it in June. The remaining two Catholic parishes in Yemen are in the two main front lines of the war: the Red Sea city of Hodeidah, home to the country’s most valuable port and south-western Taiz, controlled by the government but surrounded by rebels. “Our services are at present suspended because of the war but there are still nuns, the sisters of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who have been serving the people for several decades and continue their good work.” “It is, unfortunately, a sad reality and we pray that peace be soon restored in Yemen, especially as people suffer from hunger and the famine is affecting millions of people,” Hinder said. Yemen’s small Catholic community is mostly made up of foreigners, said Bishop Paul Hinder, head of the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia. ![]() ![]() “It all started in Yemen, therefore Yemen is very important to us,” said Connully, who heads the parish at Saint Mary’s Catholic Church in Dubai. With the 1967 revolt of southern Yemen - then Marxist - against the British, the priests fled to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The Catholics arrived around 1880, said Father Lennie Connully of the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia. Christianity is believed to have arrived in southern Yemen in the 19th century, when missionaries - mainly but not exclusively from Britain - headed to what was then a British protectorate. Local authorities blamed the Islamic State for the attack.įor centuries, Yemen hosted minorities, including Ismaili, Bahai and Jewish communities. The dead included four nuns of the Missionaries of Charity, the congregation founded by Saint Teresa of Calcutta.įather Tom Uzhunnalil, an Indian priest, was taken hostage and was released the following year. In 2016, 16 people were killed in a Catholic retirement home in Aden. In 2015, assailants destroyed a church, which had been abandoned, in the Mualla district of Aden. The church has been vandalised, robbed,” Seif added, before trailing off. The pro-government alliance, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, drove them out months later. “People were praying in here until the war of the Houthis,” he added, referring to the March 2015 rebel takeover of Aden. “This was a practising church from the days of the British (protectorate) and even before - for 140, 150 years,” said Mohammed Seif, a long-time resident of Tawahi. Scrawled on the church wall, in black paint, are the words “No entry” and “To you your religion and to me mine,” a reference to a Quranic verse.Ītop the church is a statue of Jesus, arms outstretched. ![]() The metal gates surrounding Saint Francis of Assisi Church in the Tawahi neighbourhood of Aden are locked, riddled with bullet holes, rusting. In Aden, the church has been targeted by arsonists, vandalised and closed for the foreseeable future. Sana’a, the rebel-held capital, and Aden, the bastion of the rival government, are each home to a Catholic cathedral - or what was once a cathedral. Vandalised, caught in the crossfire, burned to the ground: Yemen’s churches, once filled by small but diverse Christian communities, have been abandoned after years of devastating conflict.Īs Roman Catholic Pope Francis prepared to make his first trip to the Gulf, neighbouring Yemen - in the grip of a conflict that has triggered what the United Nations called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis - is losing the last remnants of the cultural diversity that marked its rich history.įour official parishes in Yemen are listed by the Catholic Church and officials say the country is home to a handful of Christians who mostly live in hiding as religious conservatives on all sides grow stronger. ![]()
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