HCEF is partnering with the knights of columbus in support of all the christians in the middle east

HCEF is working together with the Knights of Columbus to give hope to all Christians persecuted in the Middle East through the Solidarity Cross Program. The Knights of Columbus (K of C) is a fraternal benefit society founded in 1882 whose founding principles are charity, unity and fraternity. Now with more than 1.9 million members around the world, these core principles are what help establish the Solidarity Cross Program. In the Fall of 2015, the Knights of Columbus’ ‘Supreme Council’ wanted to help further the awareness of Christians being persecuted in the Middle East and offer relief by raising funds through the sales of olivewood crosses. To date, more than 110,000 crosses have been sold, aiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in relief money for the Middle East Christian refugees.

 

Sir Rateb Rabie, CEO and President of HCEF, has been featured in an article of Columbia Magazine’s April 2016 issue highlighting his contributions to this vital partnership with the Knights of Columbus, providing relief to Christians throughout the region, including Syria and Iraq. HCEF has utilized their connections with the Palestinian Christian Artisans in the Bethlehem Area to create the Solidarity Crosses using the tradition of hand-carving olivewood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Mexico South State Deputy José Antonio Fernández learned of the Solidarity Cross Program, he immediately recognized a bond between his own people and Christians in the Middle East.

 

Communities throughout Fernández’s jurisdiction became involved, including his own Guadalupe Council 1050 in Mexico City, the oldest council in Mexico. To date, Knights in the area have distributed approximately 500 crosses.

“There has been a good response,” Fernández said. “People may not have much money, but they buy them because they want to help however they can.”

 

 

 

“But even then, the following weekend there weren’t enough, and so I ordered again,” Blaum said. “In total we have sold 470 crosses.”

Christians in the wider Reading community also joined the effort, noted council member Robert Santoro.

 “A Lutheran friend asked me to get him two crosses,andlater asked me to increase his order to five,”Santoro explained. “He also asked if one of our parish priests wouldbless them before giving them back to him. He wanted togive his family these crosses as presents on Christmas Day.”Salvatore Ficaccio, district deputy of District #26 in Alberta, encountered similar success when he introduced theSolidarity Cross Program to his district. Three councils immediately took up the challenge – Our Lady of GraceCouncil 12419 and Monsignor John Smith Council   9658, both in Calgary, and Ficaccio’s own St. Gabriel the Archangel Council 14492 in Chestermere, Alberta – and together sold some 400 crosses.

“Many Latino and Filipino parishioners were inspired to express their solidarity with the suffering people of the Middle East,” Ficaccio said. “They were very receptive to the crosses because of their own immigrant experiences.”

 

 

 

As a Fourth Degree Knight and member of Rock Creek Council 2797 in Bethesda, Md., Rabie welcomed the invitation to partner with Knights in North America.

 

“I saw how the Knights of Columbus protected the Catholic Church in America,” he said in an interview from Bethlehem. “I felt that this is something I could do now to help defend the Mother Church here in the Holy Land.”

 

Before the present decades-long conflict between Muslims and Jews in the Holy Land began, more than 20 percent of the population was Christian, Rabie explained. Today, some 200,000 Palestinian Christians remain in the Holy Land – a mere 1.5 percent.

 

 

The ongoing strife has also reduced the stream of religious pilgrims and tourists who used to provide a livelihood for local Christian artisans in the region to a trickle. It makes sense, Rabie continued, that artisans today are putting their talents to work making crosses, the universal symbol of Christianity.

 

“We are protecting Christianity here, and just as Jesus carried his cross, we all carry a cross. It is our symbol of solidarity.” A Christian presence in the Holy Land, Rabie added, also serves as a peaceful witness to Muslims and Jews living there.”We feel that because we are Palestinians, we are the same as the Palestinian Muslims in everything but the faith,”he said. “With the Jews we have the Bible in common, and so we   feel we are a bridge for peace and can understand both sides.”

 

Overall, 52 workshops have put 192 artisans to work, producing more than 81,000 olive wood crosses for the Solidarity Cross Program.

 

Having produced 11,200 Solidarity Crosses with two other artisans in his shop, Nicola Sansour of Bethlehem has been better able to support his family with the additional income, and with his wife and three children, he can continue the family craft first started by Sansour’s grandfather in the 1920s.

 

“I inherited my skills from my father and grandfather,” Sansour said. “My older son and daughter, who are 4 and 5 years old, are always helping me, sometimes carrying the crosses and the other things for me. They like to learn more and more and feel they can relate to me through the olive- woodcraft.”

 

When the HCEF offered to help Sansour find work after the recent violence evaporated Bethlehem’s tourism trade, the Sansours found a new source of income and a new reason to hope that the olive wood trade will prosper.

 

 

According to Sansour, the crosses are also an opportunity to supplement his meager salary as a Catholic high school religion teacher and to spread the Catholic faith beyond the classroom to the world.

 

 

“When we join the two wooden pieces of the cross together, we then polish it to make it shine in the hands of all those who will hold it,” Sansour said. “I’m happy send it to my brothers and sisters in America so we can share the crosses together.”

 

With the Solidarity Crosses, he added, “I can translate charity into reality.”