Two weeks after ISIS-linked terrorists detonated an explosive at a Catholic mass at Mindanao State University (MSU) in the Philippines, killing four people and injuring 45 others, the small Catholic community in the predominantly Muslim city of Marawi is considering a smaller-scale operation. Christmas celebration.
They canceled the usual processions on the feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, instead calling on Catholics to light candles on window sills and pray the rosary at home. They also canceled the traditional Simbang Gabi, a nine-day series of dawn masses leading up to Christmas Eve. For security reasons, members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines stand guard at the university to ensure the safety of the worshippers, who numbered 72 at the time of the attack.
Edwin Dela Peña, the bishop of Marawi, told CT that members of the MSU chaplaincy ministry are still overcoming the trauma of the attack. Some ask, Lord, why did you allow this to happen to us? Dela Peña and other church leaders have used questions like this as “springboards to help (members) get their act together.” They recognize that confronting these questions about faith is essential to overcoming trauma.
“The attack provoked disbelief, emotion and great pain among everyone, Christians and Muslims,” Dela Peña said Agenzia Fides. “They hit us right in the heart, during the Eucharist, the culmination of our faith. There is a lot of fear now, but faith accompanies us and sustains us. Even in this time of distress, we feel the presence of the Lord.
While the Philippines is a majority Catholic country, Marawi, on the southern island of Mindanao, is 99.4 percent Muslim. Dela Peña believes that the timing of the attack – the first day of Advent – was a deliberate act of provocation against Christians in Marawi. The Islamic State group said its fighters were responsible for the attack, with the army and police pointing to local militant group Dawlah Islamiyah-Maute, which besieged on Marawi in 2017. Recently, the Philippine military launched operations against the group in western Mindanao, and many believe it was an act of retaliation.
The explosion, which took place on the morning of December 3, targeted students, employees and other worshipers gathered for mass in the university gymnasium. Two students, a teacher and a student’s mother were killed. Police have arrested a man suspected of being complicit in the attack, while the man who planted the explosive device remains at large.
Basari D. Mapupuno, president of MSU, said in a statement that school staff “vehemently condemn such an atrocious act of terror, which was clearly intended to sow fear and division in a community whose constituents, belonging to various faiths, coexist peacefully and exercise their right to religious freedom on campus for more than six decades now.
This is not the first time Marawi Catholics have faced an existential threat. During the 2017 siege of Marawi, militants affiliated with the Islamic State group targeted Christians, desecrating and burning St. Mary’s Cathedral and a Christian college while taking a priest and several worshipers hostage. They sought to declare an Islamic state in Lanao del Sur province.
“We realized that we were the main target (of the 2017 attack) because we are Christians and Marawi is an Islamic city,” Dela Peña said. “They wonder why we are here.”
He noted a disconnect, as Muslims are allowed to worship in their mosques in the capital Manila, although the city is predominantly Catholic. The Muslim population of Manila and other urban centers in the northern Philippines has been increasing. This demonstrates the need for greater interfaith understanding, he said, especially since the attack on the church took place during Mindanao Peace Week, which included discussions, protests and prayers between Christians and Muslims.
At the same time, the bishop noted that “we have so many friends, supporters who are Muslims. It strengthens us: the idea that those who did this to us are only a handful.”
Dela Peña said Fides that the first responders and doctors helping the victims were Muslim and that the Muslim community supported the families of those killed and injured. A Muslim MSU alumnus said Rapper, “These people are family. The families of these young students entrusted them to us. We cannot abandon them.
Christians in Marawi said these gestures “give us hope and tell us that this brutal and senseless violence will not have the last word, it will not succeed in destroying the good works built over the years”, a Dela Peña said. Fides.
Interreligious dialogues between Christians and Muslims in Marawi began in 1976, when the Catholic prelature (area outside the diocese) was established, the bishop said. After September 11, Muslims in the region began more dialogues with Christians because they felt that “Islam had been hijacked by terrorists when in fact it is a religion of peace.”
The Dawlah Islamiyah-Maute group emerged from a violent Islamist movement called the Moro National Liberation Front, which has sought independence for decades in hopes of creating an independent Islamic state. It joined two other extremist groups also aligned with ISIS – Abu Sayyaf and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters – to launch the siege in 2017. During the fighting, the Philippine military claimed that the Maute group had been “virtually wiped out”, as they had done. killed the group’s leaders. Still, the group’s remnants continued to recruit new members.
In 2019, members of the Abu Sayyaf group kill 20 worshipers and soldiers and 111 injured in double bombing during mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Cathedral on Jolo island, southwest Mindanao. Twenty years earlier, Abu Sayyaf assassinated the bishop of Jolo, outside Mount Carmel, and blew up the cathedral in 2001.
Despite all the disruptions, the work of the Catholic Church continues in Marawi, including the reconstruction of St. Mary’s Cathedral. “The bombings did not prevent us from continuing to serve our Catholic voters,” Dela Peña said MindaNews. “It’s a laboratory for Muslim-Christian integration.”
On Sunday, the Catholic community on the MSU Marawi campus celebrated Mass in a small chapel still under construction, according to a member’s Facebook page. job. The post said some of the participants still had bandages on their wounds from the attack.
Dela Peña, who has held the position for nearly 22 years, said that in these devastating times, he stands by the words of Isaiah 41:10: “Therefore do not be afraid, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will support you with my right right hand.
