After Pope Francis visited the Greek island of Lesbos in April 2016, he took 12 Muslim refugees from Syria, together with six kids, with him again to Rome aboard the papal airplane. It was an act that punctuated his pleas for sympathy towards refugees simply as European attitudes have been hardening towards them.
Five years later, the three households who traveled with Francis — two from Damascus and one from Deir al-Zour — have made lives for themselves in Rome, although they are saying that their ideas are continually with these they left behind in Syria.
“When we got on that plane with him, we felt a sense of peace that we hadn’t felt for a very long time,” stated Wafaa Eid, 35, recalling a “dreamlike” journey that swept them from years of conflict in Syria and a fraught five-month journey to achieve Europe, to a rousing welcome supplied by a Catholic charity in Rome.
“There were flowers and music — it felt like a wedding,” she stated. “It was great.”
Adapting to a brand new life, a brand new tradition, has not all the time been simple, she stated, however her household has discovered help and generosity in Rome. Both she and her husband, Osama Kawkji, 42, work in a trip dwelling run by a spiritual congregation in Rome, and their kids — Masa, 13, and Omar, 11 — are in center college within the metropolis.
“Whenever I’ve asked for help, people have reached out,” she stated, together with dad and mom of her kids’s buddies and volunteers from the charity that helped them after they first arrived. She additionally stated that they had made “many Italian friends.”
All three households “have settled in very well,” stated Cecilia Pani, who coordinates migration initiatives for the Community of St. Egidio charity, which works with weak individuals in Rome and elsewhere. She was in Lesbos in 2016 to help the households who traveled on the papal flight and has additionally helped them in Rome.
She stated that they had been capable of finding jobs and housing that permit them to reside independently.
With different church buildings, charities and nongovernmental organizations, St. Egidio has helped facilitate the arrival to Italy of greater than 3,600 refugees over the previous 5 years.
Learning Italian has come simply to Ms. Eid, who taught herself utilizing her son’s elementary college books.
“I studied, and then I would help him,” she stated.
Work additionally helped. Before beginning on the trip dwelling, she labored as a cleaner in a Rome hospital.
One approach or the opposite, she stated of the language, “I had to learn.”
In July, her household moved to a brand new condominium, the place they reside with their cat, Lulu. In the autumn, the youngsters began at a brand new college, the place they stated they preferred their courses — when bouts of COVID-19 coronavirus amongst classmates didn’t maintain them at dwelling.
Asked whether or not he was completely happy dwelling in Rome, Mr. Kawjki appeared stunned.
“Yes, of course,” he stated. “Otherwise we wouldn’t stay.”
