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Chester: Chance to hear eye-witnesses to violence in Syria and Pakistan


Christian leaders serving in areas plagued by persecution, terrorist violence and war will speak at an event in Chester tomorrow. The Most Rev Sebastian Shaw, the Catholic Archbishop of Lahore, is coming to the North West to raise awareness of the persecution faced by the Christian minority of Pakistan. The archbishop will make his visit just months after 72 people were massacred on Easter Sunday by a suicide bomber who targeted a Lahore children's playground used by Christian families. He will be joined by Sister Annie Demerjian, who will give an eye-witness account of the plight of civilians caught in the battle for Aleppo, Syria's largest city. Sister Annie frequently risks sniper bullets and mortar shells to provide emergency assistance to the victims of the fighting.

Archbishop Shaw and Sister Annie are partners of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) and help with the charity's projects for victims of persecution in Pakistan and displaced people in Syria. The evening of talks on the persecuted Church, an ACN North West annual event, will also hear an address from Dr Caroline Hull, the Lancaster- based North West manager of the charity.

The event will be held at St Columba's Church between 7.30pm and 9.30pm. It will include words of welcme from the Rt Rev Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, as well as evening prayers and a retiring collection for ACN's work with the suffering Church.

Dr Caroline Hull said: "The powerful personal witness provided by Archbishop Sebastian and Sister Annie should be of interest to all of us. We must inform ourselves about the situation for Christians and other religious minorities in places such as Pakistan and the Middle East. The talks in Chester, ACN's third Annual Event in the North West, will ensure that those suffering elsewhere in the world are not forgotten by concerned people here in the UK."

Archbishop Sebastian Shaw of Lahore As head of the leading Catholic diocese in Pakistan, Archbishop Sebastian Shaw heads a minority faith community increasingly under threat from Islamist extremism. A series of anti-Christian atrocities climaxed on 27th March 2016 when Christians celebrating Easter Day were targeted in a suicide bomb blast at Lahore's Gulshan-i- Iqbal Park. A total of 72 people (including 29 children) were killed and 340 others were injured.

Within hours of the Easter Day 2016 suicide blast Archbishop Shaw went to the hospitals in Lahore where the injured were being tended. Soon after, he told ACN: "I visited every bedside and every victim, of whatever faith ... To my own faithful, I said that they must not give up hope because, even though we were going through a period of grave difficulties, we have to learn to rise up again, just as Christ was able to raise himself again, despite carrying the cross."

Sister Annie is the key project partner for ACN as it seeks to provide emergency help to a region sorely bereft of electricity, heating, medicine, schooling, food and clean water. She co-ordinates a team of volunteers who go house-to-house assessing needs and providing basic help, especially for the sick and elderly trapped in Aleppo whose population has plummeted by upwards of 60 percent since the conflict began in March 2011.

On more than one occasion Sister Annie has had a narrow escape amid the near-constant shell fire and bomb blast. In an interview with ACN in Need, she spoke of one near miss, saying: "For a moment, I thought it was my last moment to live. We are surrounded by the rebels. You don't know when a bomb might land on you...Pray for Aleppo. People are fearful as never before."

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