Iraqi Nun Who Left Assyrian Church of the East Says Her Catholic Faith Grew Amid War

Iraqi Sister Olga Yaqob grew up in a war-torn nation and wondered whether her country would ever see peace.

“I prayed for peace every day,” she said. “I thought, there has to be a way to stop the war, as I witnessed one funeral after the other. I thought this shouldn’t be the reality of how we treat each other. God says, ‘Peace be with you’… and we Christians have a responsibility to speak and preach about peace; I wanted to become a missionary of peace.”

Sister Olga, who is 4 feet 10 inches tall and was dressed in the simple blue habit of her order, addressed a crowd in the Georgia International Convention Center hall in College Park, Georgia. She told listeners how she came to embrace the Catholic faith, entered religious life and started a religious order, the Missionaries of the Virgin Mary. She was one of four speakers at the Atlanta Archdiocese’s recent eucharistic congress who shared a similar message: that the “abundant harvest” of faith begins with a small seed planted amid life’s trials and tribulations.

Her family’s wealth could have shielded her from the violence of war, but she did not turn away, even as a teenager when she saw its destruction up close. She helped prepare the bodies of war dead for funerals. As she washed and cleaned them, many horribly disfigured by their injuries, she wept.

She grew up in the Assyrian Church of the East, which the source describes as an ancient Christian church that broke with the Catholic Church in A.D. 431 but began a fruitful theological dialogue with Rome again in the 1990s. Her early faith was nurtured by a Catholic family who invited her to Mass and showed her how to pray the rosary. While visiting a Catholic church, she also learned about Mary and her role in the church.

“I thought, who can teach me to be closer to God than Mary,” Sister Olga said. “Who can teach me more about peace than the Prince of Peace himself,” she said as she reflected on the gradual growth of her Catholic faith.

Her faith developed amid adversity. As she moved toward the Catholic Church and a celibate lifestyle, her family and the church of her childhood were dismayed. Her family disowned her after she ran away to avoid an arranged marriage. She lived among the homeless, helping others while she built her own faith life, a choice that reflected generous care for people in need (Matthew 25:35).

Her piety and good works led her bishop to invite her to start an Assyrian order of sisters in 1995. The Assyrian Church, however, rejected her after several years because she continued Catholic practices, including praying the rosary and attending daily Mass. With the help of Jesuits, she went to the United States to study in Boston.

In Boston, while studying English, she began helping students at Boston University with their faith. She was able at last to join the Catholic Church and was asked by Boston’s archbishop to serve as the Catholic chaplain at the university. Boston Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, head of the archdiocese since October 2006, has now invited her to start another new order of sisters. It will be called the Daughters of Mary, Our Lady of Nazareth.

Source: Read the original report