Middle East Crisis - Support from Europe

Rudayna Mustafa, originally from Sudan, found refuge at the Jesuit Church of St Joseph in Beirut after renewed airstrikes forced her to flee with her children in the middle of the night. Her daughter, who has autism, became more distressed as the violence escalated. Rudayna, pregnant with her fourth child, said her greatest fear was not knowing how she would give birth because she had no access to a hospital. She also spoke about her children’s interrupted education and the insecurity of living through war for a second time.

In JRS’s story “Amid bombs in Lebanon, a church opens its doors to hundreds of migrants,” Michael Petro explains that public shelters quickly filled up and often refused to admit migrants, leaving many with nowhere safe to go. JRS responded by opening the Arrupe Migrant Centre and a Jesuit monastery to shelter displaced people. He recounts that one migrant woman from the community called asking whether she and her five children could come to the church, while others arrived after walking overnight from heavily bombed areas. The story shows how migrant workers and refugees were left especially exposed when the violence intensified. 

In the JRS story “Lebanon: What is safety?”, Omar, a Syrian refugee, recalls fleeing Syria with his family at the start of the war and moving from village to village in search of shelter. After later bringing his wife and children to Lebanon, he began to question whether safety was possible when he did not feel at home and was treated only as a refugee. He describes depression, despair, and the collapse of hope as his wife faced breast cancer and he struggled to hold his family together. Through JRS mental health support, Omar says he slowly began to recover a sense of purpose.