My scrapbook from Sunday afternoon and evening, where nearly 100 were present at St. Paul’s Commons, Echo Park for “Christians in Iraq, Palestine, and Syria: A Contemporary Perspective,” a panel discussion followed by a keynote presentation by Canon Iyad Qumri, founder of Qumri Pilgrimages, which in the last 20 years has guided thousands, including many hundreds from our diocese, in Jesus Christ’s footsteps.
I served as moderator. Joumana Silyan-Saba, Los Angeles city interfaith relations official, talked about her Syrian Christian roots, the chaos in Syria since the December 2024 revolution, and the role Christians must play in building a just society. A board member of Standing With Iraqi Christians, the Rev. Canon Bill Schwartz, a San Diego-based priest who spent years serving in the Middle East, said most of the 450,000 Christians who remain in Iraq are determined to stay.
Born in East Jerusalem, Iyad, made a canon of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles by Bishop Jon Bruno, appeared on the panel and and also offered a glimpse of the pilgrimage experience in a 45-minute talk and question and answer session after our Mediterranean-style dinner.
Most in the audience were former pilgrims, including a healthy cohort from the last pilgrimage Kathy and I led in 2023, months before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. Our prayer was that those who weren’t will be tempted to go and that veteran pilgrims would make plans to return. Introducing Iyad, I noted that he encourages pilgrims to think of those we meet in the Holy Land, especially Palestinians, as our cousins.
“What do we do when we have family?” I said. “We go see them. Canon Iyad won’t say that no one is visiting the region now, but it sounds from our conversation over dinner last night that is down about 90%. Our cousins’ very livelihoods are at risk. The vital links between us and Arab Christians — especially in The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem — which are so crucial to peace and justice in the region – – are fraying and fading.
“So it’s time to go visit again. Because that’s what family does. That’s what love is. That’s what Jesus Christ needs right now, so we can help him heal a land in agony. His land. The land of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples — our cousins — our siblings.”
