On April 5, 2013, Emma Loosley stood in a church in Italy and took her wedding vows. Nearly 2,000 miles away, in the Syrian desert, a congregation stood and prayed for her.
The British archaeologist had always assumed her wedding would take place in Mar Elian, the Syrian monastery she helped to rebuild.
She was only 28 and conducting research in Syria when in 2001 Paolo Dall’Oglio, an Italian Jesuit priest, asked her to take on responsibility for restoring Mar Elian to its former glory. Three years later, it was complete. Professor Loosley left but returned every summer until the outbreak of the Syrian uprising.
The violence made it impossible for her to return to Mar Elian for her wedding so she and her fiancé flew instead to Italy where one of the community’s priests, Father Jihad, was on sabbatical. As Father Jihad performed the wedding ceremony, Father Jacques Mourad, the chief priest of Mar Elian, gathered the villagers at the monastery to pray for a happy marriage.
Yesterday Professor Loosley said she was “numb” at the news of Mar Elian’s demolition. Of the priests she knew, only Father Jihad remains alive and free.
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“We still don’t know the fate of our friends,” she said. In her time in the desert community, she never saw a hint of conflict between the faiths. “There had never been any sectarian issues,” she said. “That’s what makes it so tragic.”