WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Dominican Sister Attracta Kelly in Adrian, Michigan, said a group of Dominicans who escaped Islamicists in northern Iraq are trying to get to the United States -- and she wants to help. Sister Kelly told Catholic News Service that she has spoken a few times with the superior of the group, who escaped the Islamic State fighters on the Ninevah Plain. They haven't talked often, but enough for Sister Kelly to know how desperate the situation is for Sister Maria Hanna and 51 other Dominican sisters, along with their family members."The problem is they have nothing," Sister Kelly said of the group, which fled to the northern Kurdish city of Irbil. "They are sleeping in the streets, sleeping under trees. There is a church (where) they have been sleeping on pews, on the floor, outside in the yard, and they have no shelter. They are having a time getting food, and they want to leave the country." She told Catholic News Service in a telephone interview Aug. 18 that she had last spoken with Sister Hanna early that morning. She said the Iraqi Dominican still has a working cellphone and also is able to send email every so often describing what they are facing.
The Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena have had a presence in Iraq since the 13th century, so this is not first time they have been in such dire straits, Sister Kelly noted.
< back to Special Report: Christians in the Crossfire >
News