Frans van der Lugt

Life and Ministry

Franciscus van der Lugt was born at The Hague in AD 1938 to a Dutch Catholic banking family, entered the Society of Jesus in AD 1959, was ordained at Beirut in AD 1971 after studying psychology at Nijmegen and Arabic at Lebanon, and was sent to Syria the same year. He served the Jesuit ministry at Homs for forty-three years, opening the Al-Ard farm at Jabal Arbaeen in AD 1980 as a residential program for Syrian young people with disabilities (Christian and Muslim alike), pioneering ecumenical retreat work between the Melkite, Syriac, Maronite, and Roman Catholic communities of central Syria, and organizing the annual interfaith mountain pilgrimage from Homs to the Krak des Chevaliers that drew Muslim and Christian Syrians in the thousands through the AD 1990s and AD 2000s. Resident of the small Jesuit community at Bustan al-Diwan in the old Christian quarter of Homs, he was fluent in Damascene Arabic and was universally known in the city as Abouna Frans — Our Father Frans.

Circumstances of Death

When the Syrian civil war reached Homs in AD 2011 and government forces besieged the old city from AD 2012, van der Lugt refused all opportunities for evacuation, declaring that the Syrian people were sharing a great pain, and we want to share their pain. He remained in the besieged old city with some twenty-four Christian families and a handful of Muslim neighbors through the winter of AD 2013-14, distributing what food he could from the rapidly emptying Jesuit pantry, conducting daily Mass for the remnant Christian community, and posting short video messages on YouTube describing the starvation of Homs to the world outside. On the morning of 7 April AD 2014, an unidentified gunman — believed by subsequent forensic accounts to belong to a jihadist faction operating in the besieged quarter — entered the Jesuit residence, dragged van der Lugt into the courtyard, and shot him twice in the head. He was seventy-five years old.

Legacy

Frans van der Lugt was buried in the garden of the Jesuit residence at Bustan al-Diwan by the Christian neighbors who had refused to leave Homs with him. The Society of Jesus and the Vatican have repeatedly named him as a Syrian martyr, and the cause for his beatification was opened by the Apostolic Nunciature of Damascus in AD 2018. His witness is that the missionary shares the pain: the Dutch Jesuit who had given Syria forty-three years gave his last winter to the people of Homs and was killed in their courtyard when the food ran out. The Al-Ard farm continues at Jabal Arbaeen; the Christians and Muslims he served remember him together.