Dominican nuns in Iraq: A story of devotion and courage

By: Robert Ewan

Guillaume de Montferrat was the first Dominican father to visit Iraq. He was the disciple of Saint Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order. Guillaume visited Mosul, northern Iraq, and Baghdad in 1235. He was followed by Riccoldo de Mont Croce, who travelled extensively throughout the Middle East for over twelve years.Riccoldo lived briefly in Baghdad, witnessing the sale of Christian slaves after the fall of Acre in 1291.He recorded how he had come across a mound of Dominican vestments, blood stained habits, breviaries and books. He learned from the lone survivor, a Dominican nun, how the entire community had been put to the sword.

Father Duvall, the head of the Dominican mission in Iraq, facilitated the arrival of six French Dominican nuns. They reached Mosul on November 7, 1873. Their Journey took 53 days to complete. The newly arrived nuns set up the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of Tours (Al Taqadouma, in Arabic) and later the Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena.Thier original house still stands in Mosul.From the outset, the order had a clear vision: to serve the Iraqi church and all the Iraqis in equal terms. It had two distinct objectives: religious education for girls and nursing the sick. The sisters engaged in Catechesis, education, pastoral work and hospital ministry. They set up many girls’ schools and clinics.The pious nuns served in the area around Mosul, travelling between these villages, despite the rugged and often harsh winter terrian.The nuns were of great faith and compassion, they taught local women how to read and write as well as sewing and other domestic skills. They opened an orphanage and a primary school in Mosul. In the surrounding country side they set up workshops for sewing and embroidery.

 

The Dominican nuns set up the first and the oldest congregation of Iraqi nuns in the history of modern Iraq. This was in Mosul in 1877.They recruited women of diverse Eastern Catholic and non-Catholic traditions (Chaldean, Syriac, Orthodox, Armenian and Nestorians).The nuns played a major role in establishing women monastic life in Iraq.Additionaly, they participated in developing education and other professions in northern Iraq before their eventual arrival in Baghdad.

During World War One, the Turks and their Kurdish allies persecuted all the Christians under their domain. The area went into turbulence. Several Christian villages and dioceses were burned and pillaged. Death was lurking in every corner. Seven of the nuns were killed, three of them were savagely tortured before they were killed, and the rest of the nuns were all scattered.

 

Despite these tragic events, the nun's faith blossomed amid death, devastation of war.The superior nuns decided to approach the Holy Father in Rome to allow them to re-start their convent in Mosul. The permission was granted and they set ups a new convent by the name of “The convent of Saint Katrina Al Syriania”.On April 30, 1927 the convent doors opened, It was an unbelievable sight to see women aged between 50and 60 years old who, for the first time ,were living under one roof and would be called sisters.  

In 1928, the lay community obtained canonical recognition from Rome as a pontifical institute. The native Iraqi women were able to take their rightful place among Catholic women worldwide. The churches of the East and West came together, under one roof, in their communion. At that time, this was a unique phenomenon.

Iraqi Christian women, representing various Christian rights, joined to establish a Roman Catholic religious institute together with the global order of the Dominicans. The congregation continues to honour and celebrate the diverse rights, liturgical languages and traditions of its women, now mainly Syriac and Chaldean, as well as the Roman right.

 

In 1928 the Dominican Sisters of the Presentation opened a private school for girls and an orphanage in Bab Al-sharqi, a modern district of Baghdad. This was the first private school for girls and was unique in its high standards of education and discipline it offered. It continued to be popular until it was put under the government jurisdiction during the early part of the 1970’s.Throughout the 1930s, the Presentation Sisters worked in the government hospitals of Baghdad as nurses .They taught nursing and Midwifery to many Iraqi women. The first Iraqi nurse was a member of their order and trained by them. The Dominican sisters felt that they have achieved their mission in Iraq and left to France to join their convent. 
 
The Dominican Order needed somebody to enforce rules in the new convent. They got a nun from France to teach and uphold the rules for the nuns to follow. Sister Mary Amy was appointed to assistant the French nun and at the same time was appointed to assist the convent director who would take care of the business part.

The French nun finished her job and left to France to join her convent. The convent director was appointed to continue taking care of the convent on daily bases until they elect the Mother Superior. On July 3, 1933, the religious committee met and voted for Sister Mary Amy to be the first General Superior and the first Mother Superior of the Convent of Saint Katrina Al Syriania

During her life she was able to spread the Christianity, opened many kindergartens for girls and boys, helped many young women to live the Christian way and became the best of mothers. Mother Mary Amy before she became a nun, opened many centres for teaching Christianity, mathematics and the Arabic language, in the North of Iraq.  Because of her work and the many centres she opened, the Dominican superiors opened the new convent, “St. Katrina Al Syrian Convent.”

 

In 1937 they started building a private hospital which was inaugurated in 1950 by the name of St. Raphael, which they still run to date. A nursing school followed in 1962, were hundreds of nurses trained and graduated to serve in the government sector. Today over 120 native Iraqi sisters belong to the congregation and at some point before the invasion of Iraq the sisters ran 10 schools with over 2,500 students. 

After the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, most of the institutions run by the sisters remain closed or deserted, especially outside the autonomous region of Kurdistan. The hospital of St. Raphael is still running despite the killing and looting that goes on in Baghdad. It is still run by the tireless Sister Maryanne Pierre who kept the hospital open. The Sister, who studied nursing in the United States, remained steadfast and defiant to serve the Iraqi people. Sister Pierre kept treating patients even as bombs fell around her and looters ransacked nearby buildings. "This is my job to stay here to help people," she said in an interview with CBS News. "Even during the first Gulf War we stayed. It's our duty to stay here for all the people."

 

In an interview with the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, two Iraqi Dominican nuns recounted their efforts to serve the Church and the needy in the nation amidst war and violence.“When the bombs started falling in Baghdad and people started to flee, we opened our convents to families,” said one nun. “We gave people a place to stay … Years ago; the government nationalized our Catholic schools. After the regime fell, the government gave the buildings back to us. We let displaced families stay in the schools, too. We made sure people had the necessities to live. Our pantries were always empty, because we always gave everything away.” They added: “early in the crisis, especially in 2003 and 2004, most of Iraq’s hospitals closed down, we ran the Al-Hayat Hospital in Baghdad, and we stayed opened. We stayed open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We stayed open for the people.”

St Dominic founded the first monastery of nuns at Prouille, France in 1206. Today there are more than 200 monasteries of Dominican Nuns throughout the world.