By Beth Griffin
Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) — An Iraqi Dominican nun says life in her war-torn country is one of suffering, violence and fear of kidnappings and attacks on civilians.

Sister Diana CNS PHOTO/GREGORY A. SHEMITZ

Nonetheless, she said, “We can only have faith and hope. I pray and hope that things get better, or else I won’t be able to continue my life and my vocation.”

Sister Diana, a Dominican Sister of St. Catherine of Siena, spoke at a briefing at the New York headquarters of the pontifical agency Catholic Near East Welfare Association. She did not use her surname for fear of reprisals against family members in Iraq. Sister Diana’s brother and six cousins have been killed there since the war began in 2003. She has been living with a group of Dominicans in Michigan since 2006

“People thought (the war) would change Iraq, but it didn’t turn out the way they thought,” she said. “We thought it would be different. They promised us there would be freedom.”

Instead, Sister Diana said, “the future of our children is in danger. It’s kind of a tragedy when kids grow up seeing car bombs and bodies in the street. This is not normal. It’s like a fiction movie.”

Sister Diana graduated from the University of Mosul in 2004. She said she studied by candlelight because there was no electricity or gas for generators. She described the presence of soldiers at the university and said she heard explosions while she was in class. She said education is free in Iraq, even through college.

Some 1,600 students attended the University of Mosul when she was a student. Last year, she said, eight students and three professors were kidnapped and held for ransom. They were tortured and eventually released, but Sister Diana said that no more than 400 students, including her niece, now go to classes.

The violence in Iraq is perpetrated by different groups, she said, including terrorists, foreigners and opportunistic criminals. Sister Diana said U.S. soldiers “shoot without knowing who’s innocent.” She said her eye doctor was fatally shot by a U.S. soldier as he left his office one evening.

Sister Diana said, “If you knock on doors in any Iraqi city, each family will tell you a different story of violence and loss.” She said her brother, the married father of four children, was killed by “masked people” one morning after he left for work.

She said his widow asks, “What is his guilt? What did he do? Why is this happening?”

Christians have historically been a tiny minority in Iraq, but their numbers have shrunk dramatically, to about 3 percent of the population, since 2003. Most Iraqi Christians are Catholics and many of the estimated 350,000 Catholics still in Iraq have sought refuge in the northern province of Kurdistan.

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