Father Francis Van Der Lugt is, says Father Jan Stuyt, “like a martyr for the interreligious dialogue.” In fact, he is a vivid illustration of why interreligious dialogue is fruitless. The Muslims with whom Father Francis Van Der Lugt was talking and had good relations were not those who murdered him, and clearly they did not have any influence, or did not care to exercise any influence, over the one who did. “Interreligious dialogue” in the West consists of an endless streams of meetings and conferences in paneled board rooms and official statements that do nothing whatsoever to stop the Islamic jihadists who are brutalizing Christians in accord with commands in the Qur’an and Sunnah.
“Father Francis Van Der Lugt Dead In Syria: Dutch Jesuit Priest Killed By Gunman In Homs,” by Albert Aji for the Associated Press, April 7:
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — A masked gunman assassinated a well-known, elderly Dutch priest on Monday, shooting him in the head in the garden of a monastery where he lived in the central Syrian city of Homs on Monday, a fellow priest, an activist group and Syria’s state-run media said.
Father Francis Van Der Lugt — a Jesuit, the same order as Pope Francis — had lived in Syria for decades and had refused to be evacuated with other civilians from the battleground city of Homs.
The motives for the attack were not known, and no one immediately claimed responsibility for the killing, which took place in Bustan al-Diwan, rebel-held neighborhood of Homs that has been blockaded for over a year by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
But the fact that Van Der Lugt was gunned down in a rebel-held area will likely underscore fears of many in Syrian Christian and Muslim minorities for the fate of their communities should Assad’s government be overthrown by the rebels. Over the past year, hard-line rebel groups, including the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front have become more influential and dominant among the opposition fighters in the city.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the 75-year-old Van Der Lugt, was “a man of peace, who with great courage, had wanted to remain faithful, in an extremely risky and difficult situation, to the Syrian people to whom he had dedicated, for a long time, his life and spiritual service.”It appeared that Van Der Lugt was directly targeted. A single gunman walked into the monastery, entered the garden and shot him in the head, said Rev. Ziad Hillal, a priest, who was in the convent when the attacked occurred.
“I am truly shocked. A man of peace has been murdered,” Hillal said in a phone interview from Homs with the Vatican Radio.
Van der Lugt’s death was first reported by Homs-based priest Assad Nayyef, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the state-run news agency, SANA.
An activist based in a blockaded rebel-area said rebel fighters were shocked by the priest’s death.
“The man was living with us, eating with us, sleeping with us. He didn’t leave, even when the blockade was eased,” said Beibars Tilawi said via Skype. Regardless of the rebels’ views toward Christians, the priest was well-liked for his efforts to get the blockade lifted and alleviate widespread suffering and hunger among civilians, Tilawi said.
In Belgium, the secretary of the Dutch Jesuit order Father Jan Stuyt said the slain priest had been living in Syria since the mid-1960s and was on good terms with the country’s Muslim majority.
“He is like a martyr for the interreligious dialogue,” Father Jan Stuyt said in a telephone interview with AP in Brussels….
mortimer says
Perhaps the murder of Father Francis Van Der Lugt, SJ, will awaken Pope Francis to the reality of jihad and the implacable nature of this morbid ideology.
Reality Check says
Pope Francis is a pro-Muslim coward and will do absolutely NOTHING to awaken Christians to the reality of Islam.
Here is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on him – it shows clearly who he is and all the damage he can do:
“Leaders of the Islamic community in Buenos Aires welcomed the news of Bergoglio’s election as pope, noting that he “always showed himself as a friend of the Islamic community”, and a person whose position is “pro-dialogue”.
They praised Bergoglio’s close ties with the Islamic community and noted his comments when Pope Benedict’s 2006 Regensburg lecture was interpreted by many as denigrating Islam.
According to them, Bergoglio immediately distanced himself from Benedict’s language and said that statements that create outrage within the Islamic community “will serve to destroy in 20 seconds the careful construction of a relationship with Islam that Pope John Paul II built over the last 20 years.”
Bergoglio visited both a mosque and an Islamic school in Argentina, visits that Sheik Mohsen Ali, the Director for the Diffusion of Islam, called actions that strengthened the relationship between the Catholic and Islamic communities.
Dr. Sumer Noufouri, Secretary General of the Islamic Center of the Argentine Republic (CIRA), added that Bergoglio’s past actions make his election as pope a cause within the Islamic community of “joy and expectation of strengthening dialogue between religions”.
Noufouri said that the relationship between CIRA and Bergoglio over the course of a decade had helped to build up Christian-Muslim dialogue in a way that was “really significant in the history of monotheistic relations in Argentina”.
Ahmed el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of al-Azhar and president of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, sent congratulations after the pope’s election. Al-Tayeb had “broken off relations with the Vatican” during Benedict XVI’s time as pope; his message of congratulations also included the request that “Islam asks for respect from the new pontiff”.
Shortly after his election, in a meeting with ambassadors from the 180 countries accredited with the Holy See, Pope Francis called for more interreligious dialogue—”particularly with Islam”.
He also expressed gratitude that “so many civil and religious leaders from the Islamic world” had attended his installation Mass.
An editorial in the Saudi Arabian paper Saudi Gazette strongly welcomed the pope’s call for increased interfaith dialogue, stressing that while the pope was “reiterating a position he has always maintained”, his public call as pope for increased dialogue with Islam “comes as a whiff of fresh air at a time when much of the Western world is experiencing a nasty outbreak of Islamophobia”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Francis#Islam
So far, so bad.
Besides, with hundreds of Christians killed every day and Pope Francis not doing anything at all, do you really think that the death of ONE priest will impress him in any way?
Most probably he is calling Islamic leaders right now to tell them how sorry he is that the death of this particular priest will leave the wrong impression about Islam.
Having read the Wiki article above, I am wondering if he got his appointment as a Pope thanks to some Muslim conspiracy we know nothing about. Come on! Muslims loved the guy long before he became a Pope – isn’t that too much of a coincidence?
If he dies, Muslims will be probably the ones to cry the most!
ploome says
Pope Francis may find time for this martyr priest, after he deals with gay marriage and women in the priesthood.
Don;t hold your breath, the Pope is on a bus somewhere, looking for more homelss muslims.
Robert Rockwell says
Hmmmm perhaps. Perhaps I will walk outside and encounter downpour of $100 bills…Never know, perhaps it could happen.
Champ ✿ says
Perhaps the murder of Father Francis Van Der Lugt, SJ, will awaken Pope Francis to the reality of jihad and the implacable nature of this morbid ideology.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Love the sarcasm, Mortimer! lol! 😀
Charli Main says
A good Muslim obeying the orders and instructions given to him in the Koran i.e. killing infidels and doing Allah´s work.
In his twisted, brainwashed mind, he has bought a one way ticket to an eternal life of enjoying slave women and sweet little b*m boys.
exsgtbrown says
there is no distinction in Muslim communities between those who hope to wage violent jihad and those who abhor it.
This doesn’t mean that all Muslims are terrorists or some other such nonsense. It simply means that those who hold to doctrines of violent jihad are not expelled from mosques, and mosques do not have programs teaching against these ideas that they ostensibly reject.
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
I remember being on vacation in the Ardennes and reading in the big Brussels daily newspaper of major riots in that city one summer. At a dinner party I asked for more info on who just these rioters were. The answer was that they were African immigrants taken in from the former Belgian colonies there, in particular the Moslem ones. That was in the late 80s or early 90s.
I was also informed to never ask such a question in public there, it could be damaging, even criminal.
A few years ago we saw the Beligan police clubbing and beating a political demonstration held by the Vlaams Party, and they had a permit for it. Whoa, my dinner partners, Belgians all, were not kidding: Vlaams Blok has since been outlawed.
Reality Check says
Dreadful! Thank you for the info. It’s totally surprising that our world still stands.
CogitoErgoSum says
Based on the information provided in this news article I do not know who killed Father Van Der Lugt. Neither do I know for certain the reason for his murder. All I know right now is that a Catholic priest has been killed in cold blood by a masked gunman.
My sense of justice tells me to refrain from jumping to any hasty conclusions and not to make any possibly false accusations; to wait until the murderer is found and brought to trial. If those “good” Muslims who liked this priest wish to show the world what kind of government they will install in Syria if the jihadists are victorious, this is an opportunity. So hey, you “good’ Muslims, track down this killer, turn him over to the proper authorities and put him on trial so as to show everyone what kind of judicial system and government we should expect from you. Demonstrate to the world what kind of people you really are……or should we conclude that all of you are just as barbaric as the masked killer?
Why do I suspect I will never hear any more about this?
Tom Davis says
Please recall the article: “…no one immediately claimed responsibility for the killing, which took place in Bustan al-Diwan, rebel-held neighborhood of Homs…”
Precious little food has reached this place over the last two years. There is no way an agent of the Assad regime could have walked into the Bustan al-Diwan neighborhood and perpetrated this murder. It had to have come from a rebel group.
Tom Davis says
“If those “good” Muslims who liked this priest wish to show the world what kind of government they will install in Syria if the jihadists are victorious, this is an opportunity. So hey, you “good’ Muslims, track down this killer, turn him over to the proper authorities and put him on trial so as to show everyone what kind of judicial system and government we should expect from you. ”
Somehow I have the feeling that Father Van Der Lugt’s Muslim neighbors don’t have any guns, and probably can’t get any unless they sign up with one side or the other, in which case justice will go out the window. So it ain’t gonna happen. Nice idea, though.
Defcon 4 says
LOL, I hope you’re being sarcastic. How many non-scuzzlums still live in Syria these days? Is the population of non-scuzzlums in Syria increasing?
patron saint says
hello mi5 mi6 watching us ,this could possibly have been one of the the jihadist who left our shores while you watch us they commit murder.it does not matter what they pay you some of you must have have a concussions if this does not haunt you in your sleep then you have a wicked heart
Champ ✿ says
What mohammedan savages!
Salah says
“In fact, he is a vivid illustration of why interreligious dialogue is fruitless.”
How about a koranic interreligious dialogue?
What does the Qur’an say about the Holiness of Jesus, and what does this same Qur’an say about the Sinfulness of Muhammad:
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2011/05/saint-and-sinner.html
Tom Davis says
One thing that should be made clear is that Father Francis Van Der Lugt probably would not have seen himself as a “martyr for the interreligious dialogue”. Unlike Father Paolo Dall’Oglio SJ (abducted in July 2013), he seemed to not have any unfounded views about the rebels. His stated concerns were always for his Christian flock – now less than 30 persons – and their longtime Muslim neighbors. He acted out of charity for the people near him. Sure, he probably acted out of hope for “interreligious dialogue” at some level, but it seems to have not been a high priority and he seemed to have understood its limits. His public statements that I have seen seemed to always be about the suffering of ordinary people and only included gassy highbrow principles when beating up the people on both sides who were responsible for this carnage.
Matt says
Our pope is not a coward. Sadly he cannot openly speak out because if he did so he’d put at risk the thousands of Christians living and working in Islamic countries.
Matt says
Our pope is not a coward. Sadly he cannot openly speak out because if he did so he’d put at risk the thousands of Christians living and working in Islamic countries.
Kathy Brown says
Matt: He’s my Pope too-but I’m sorry to tell you that, tho’ I don’t think he’s a coward, he’s something worse. And that’s someone who’s prideful, thinking that, via his own ‘charisma’, HE can do what no one can, i.e., ‘bridge the gap’ between normal healthy human beings and the aberrational practitioners of the Religion of [No] Peace. It is one thing to observe this sort of hubris in Obama who is, of course, a communist-atheist-muslim-lover. It is quite another to watch it proceed apace in the Vicar of Christ on earth…
As for your theory that His Holiness abstains from talking turkey to these utterly appalling human beings (!?) so as to secure their goodwill for his flock: That is laughable. As we speak they are raping, mutilating, beheading, maiming and torturing every Catholic, Copt and Christian they can lay their hands on (not to mention the Jews and fellow-Muslims they dispatch in like manner).
No Matt: Pope Francis has a bully pulpit which he refuses to use for good. His failure to do so aids and abets the Muslim savages who see nothing but weakness in his ‘outreach’ and ‘dialogue’.
Doc says
Are they that afraid of the spoken truth that they had to murder and elderly man ? Cowards killers of the old children and women. They use bombs to kill men blow up cars where’s the honor in that
Defcon 4 says
This is the kind of religious outreach Christians and Jews can expect once islam0nazis gain power.
Leo says
Please pray for this holy priest, who gave his life in service to THe LORD.
Father Francis van Der Lugt; may The Lord protect you and may you rest in peace. we ask this through Christ Our Lord, Amen.
Please pray for The murderer of Fr Van Der Lugt,
LORD, please pour out your grace upon this wretched sinner who has murdered one of your children, may he know that he has sinned gravely against you and that he or she will repent of his sin and come to know YOUR love and mercy.
In the name of the Father, and the Son , and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Champ ✿ says
Only an islamic savage would murder a helpless old man and in cold blood. Sick! And evil!