Daily Times

Vandalised, caught in the crossfire, burnt to the ground: Yemen’s churches, once filled by small but diverse Christian communities, are now abandoned after years of devastating conflict.

As Pope Francis prepares to make his first trip to the Gulf, neighbouring Yemen — in the grip of a conflict that has triggered what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis — is losing the last remnants of the cultural diversity that marked its rich history. Today, four official parishes in Yemen are listed by the Catholic Church, and officials say the country is still home to a handful of Christians who mostly live in hiding as religious conservatives on all sides grow stronger.

Sanaa, 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. In the southern port city of Aden, the church has been targeted by arsonists, vandalised and closed for the foreseeable future.

‘No entry’

The metal gates surrounding the St. Francis of Assisi church in the Tawahi neighbourhood of Aden are locked, riddled with bullet holes, rusting.

Scrawled on the church wall, in black spray paint, are the words “No entry” and “To you your religion, and to me mine”, a reference to a Koranic verse. Atop the church is a statue of Jesus, arms outstretched. The statue has no head.

“This was a practising church from the days of the British (protectorate), and even before, for 140, 150 years,” said Mohammed Seif, a longtime resident of Tawahi.

“People were praying in here until the war of the Huthis,” he added, referring to the March 2015 rebel takeover of Aden. The pro-government alliance, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, drove them out months later.

“It’s stopped ever since. The church has been vandalised, robbed,” Seif added, before trailing off. In 2015, assailants blew up a church — already abandoned — in the Mualla district of Aden. The attack was never officially claimed.

In 2016, 16 people were shot dead in a Catholic retirement home in Aden, including four nuns of the Missionaries of Charity, the congregation founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Father Tom Uzhunnalil, an Indian priest, was also taken hostage before being released the following year. Local authorities blamed the Islamic State group for the attack.

‘Started in Yemen’

For centuries, Yemen hosted minorities including Ismaili, Bahai and Jewish communities.

Christianity is believed to have arrived in southern Yemen in the 19th century, as missionaries — mainly but not exclusively from Britain — found their way to what was then a British protectorate. The Catholics arrived around 1880, according to Father Lennie Connully of the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia.

With the 1967 revolution of southern Yemen — then Marxist — against the British, the priests fled to Bahrain and the UAE. “It all started in Yemen, therefore Yemen is very important to us,” Connully, who heads the parish at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Dubai, told AFP.

Published in Daily Times, February 3^rd 2019.