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Dutch Jesuit priest beaten and killed in Syria

Frans van der Lugt was shot in the head twice in the garden of his monastery in the besieged city of Homs.

VATICAN CITY – A Dutch Jesuit priest was beaten and shot dead by unidentified gunmen at his monastery in the besieged Syrian city of Homs on Monday, the Vatican said.

Frans van der Lugt, 75, who had been living in Syria since the early 1970s, was a man of great courage who had refused to leave the city despite the danger there, Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said.

“Father Frans was killed in the garden of our monastery,” Rev. Ziad Hillal, another Jesuit who lived there with the Dutch priest, told Vatican Radio. “They shot him in the head. It was a premeditated act.”

The Jesuit order in the Netherlands said the priest was taken from the monastery in the morning and shot twice in the head.

Lombardi praised van der Lugt as a man of great courage who “despite an extremely difficult and risky situation, wanted to remain faithful to the Syrian people to whom he had dedicated his life and his spiritual service.”

Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans wrote on his Facebook page that van der Lugt “only brought good to Homs, was a Syrian among Syrians, (who) refused to abandon them even when it meant risking his own life.”

Christians made up about 10 percent of Syria’s population before protests in 2011 led to a wider civil war. The minority traditionally supported President Bashar Assad for protecting them and has been attacked by his opponents for that stand.

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Remembering Nathan Trapuzzano

http://andthechurch.com/2014/04/02/nathan/

In my first years as a priest, on Tuesday evenings during the academic year I drove from the parish where I was assigned in Carmel to spend some time with the Catholic students at the Newman Center at Ball State.  My visits involved an hour conference on some aspect of the faith and exposition the Blessed Sacrament in the church.  During Eucharistic Adoration I  heard confessions while the students were praying.  Most of the time I stayed afterwards to give students who desired it spiritual direction.  At the request of my bishop, once a month I celebrated a Latin Mass at Saint Mary in Muncie before going to the Newman Center at Saint Francis.

One of the Ball State students who faithfully attended these Tuesday evenings was Nathan Trapuzzano.    Nathan was a classics student who enjoyed teaching me a thing or two about Latin.

There were two things beyond his command of Latin letters that impressed me about Nathan from the start.  The first was his goodness.  He was a true gentleman, considerate of others and always wanting to become a better man.    The second thing that impressed me about Nathan was his deep Catholic faith.  He wanted to understand and live his faith at the greatest depth possible.  His questions during the conferences betrayed both intelligence and humility.  Nathan’s starting point as a Catholic was full acceptance of what the Church taught.  From there he sought to apply his considerable intellectual gifts to not only understand it for himself but also to be able to explain it others.  Fides quaerens intellectum.  His childlike trust in the Catholic faith sought adult understanding in order to be able to give a reason for his hope to others.

I saw in Nathan all of the qualities that one would look for in a good husband and father, which also happen to be the qualities that make a good priest.  When I told Nathan this, he took it to prayer.  Eventually, God made it clear to him that his vocation was to be a husband and a father.  While part of me was disappointed, I realized that one day he would make the woman he would marry very happy.

Eventually I moved on to another assignment and lost touch with Nathan.  I was so happy about a year and a half ago to receive an email from him telling me that was engaged and asking me to celebrate his wedding Mass at Sacred Heart in Indianapolis.

Nathan’s deep faith shone in the planning of the ceremony.  He wanted a full compliment of altar servers in the procession and the maximum amount of ceremonial possible.  Both he and his fiancé wanted the focus of their Nuptial Mass to be first on Jesus Christ present in the Eucharist and then on the Sacrament of Matrimony that they would receive.  Everything else that is usually the focus in a wedding was of lesser importance in their minds.  On the night before wedding after the rehearsal, Nathan insisted that everyone in the wedding party have an opportunity to go to confession. This was the first and only time I have been asked to hear confessions after a wedding rehearsal in my almost seven years as a priest.

Nathan was a man who knew God to be a forgiving and loving Father.  He wanted to share that experience with others.

The wedding itself was profoundly beautiful.  My prayer for Nathan and his wife was simple, “May God grant you many, many happy years.”

While Nathan was a serious young man, he knew how to have fun.  One of the gifts that he and his wife gave me for celebrating the wedding was a thick Latin textbook, which, as I am writing this, sits on the coffee table in my study.

Yesterday morning Nathan Trapuzzano was shot in the abdomen in an apparent robbery.  He died shortly thereafter.  His pregnant wife survives him.

We remember his wife and their unborn child in our prayers.  We ask God to grant wisdom to the police as they try to take the two dangerous men who killed Nathan off the streets.  We pray also for his murderers, who took the life of one of the best young men I have ever known.  May God forgive them.

Funeral arrangements will be at Holy Rosary Parish, 520 Stevens Street, Indianapolis (317-636-4478)

Click here to donate to support his widow and soon-to-to born daughter.

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Evil is bad, but pointless evil defies comprehension
by Dr. Edward Peters
Two Catholic men were murdered in the last few days, one an elderly Jesuit who elected to stay with his flock in a war zone, the other a young husband and father-to-be walking home, it seems, from class. I knew neither man but both seem to have led lives focused on God and neighbor. Both were shot yet their deaths strike me very differently.
The old Jesuit was killed by cowardly religious haters. The priest’s murder was immediately described as a kind of martyrdom, a final demonstration of the love that he had showed for decades to the victims of war and persecution. The old Jesuit is, and should be, recognized as a hero, an example to us all of that Love which conquers all.
The student, in contrast, died simply because some [supply your own expletive], not content with the young man’s wallet (and his identity, etc.), felt like shooting him in gut for the hell of it. The young man’s death was utterly pointless. His last moments on earth are an inspiration to no one (though perhaps a few in the area will discreetly avoid walking along that stretch of road for a while).
I am sad for both men, but I take just a bit of vicarious pride in the legacy of the old Jesuit, in his serving faithfully and selflessly until death. He’s “one of our guys” and as a Catholic I share a just bit in the glory that is now his. But the young man, the husband, the father, I see in him a man and a family robbed of so incalculably much, apparently, for nothing. In his death I sense only the empty void left by gratuitous evil. I’d like to think that I could, if called upon, take a bullet for Jesus, but I shudder to think of taking a bullet for nothing.
Just as I know I can do more with my life so I am certain that this young man could have done much more with his had it not been stolen from him. I even wonder, if this young man’s life had to end in violence, why could death not have come after 50 years of serving others? Why could he not be a martyr? Why did he have to be statistic?
Someone, help me see the redemptive value of such mindless waste. Right now all I see is the nothing.
In the meantime, May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Dr. Edward Peters | April 8, 2014 at 11:45 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/p25nov-Ih