
CV NEWS FEED // In a recent feature piece published in a newsletter for the Comunione e Liberazione (Communion and Liberation) Catholic lay movement, twin brothers Johnny and George Jallouf from Aleppo, Syria, shared the inspiring story of how they responded to their priestly call amid war.
In an interview given to the publication following their mid-July ordination, the two brothers reflected that even as war continues to ravage their homeland, God “has never stopped acting.”
“From an early age we breathed in the beauty of a Christian life, thanks to our parents and our engagement in our parish, serving mass as altar boys, singing in the mass choir and then joining the scouts.” the brothers stated in the interview. “All these things formed us and sustained us in our life here.”
Fr George will serve as an assistant pastor at a church in Aleppo, where he used to serve as an altar boy. Fr Johnny has been assigned to serve as assistant director of the Magnificat Conservatory in Jerusalem.
Fr Johnny said in the interview that he began feeling a call to the priesthood when he was 15 years old. “I was very young and for a long time I fought it because I thought I was going to get married, I was going to be a doctor.”
However, when the war broke out, Fr Johnny remembered, “every dream or project seemed to collapse.” In prayer, Fr Johnny asked God at the time, “What do you want me to do? I want to be happy, but tell me how.” While reading St Theresa’s book, The Story of a Soul, Fr Johnny said he was struck by the phrase “Give me souls and take away the rest.”
At the time, Aleppo was being bombed by Isis, rebel armies, the Syrian army, and the Kurds, who had also invaded the city.
“I understood at that moment that the body is nothing without a soul,” Fr Johnny said, “and that perhaps God wanted me as a priest to heal the wounded souls of my people and not to operate on bodies in a hospital.” Fr Johnny said his discernment was not carried out alone, but in relationship, with the friars of the Custody of the Holy Land, as well as the nuns and priests who answered his many questions.
Fr George shared that his attraction to the priesthood stemmed from early childhood. “Even as a child, as an altar boy, I looked up to priests with esteem and admiration: those I met fascinated me because of their life, their gladness,” which he noticed was unphased, even by war.
“I lived this question,” he said of his discernment, “this desire to be completely for Christ, in silence and discreetly.”
Although the two men had traveled to Jerusalem and Italy for their vocational journey, they ultimately returned to Aleppo for their ordination.
“We did it out of gratitude,” they concluded: “Coming back here was a way of telling our people not to be afraid because we are certain that the Lord loves each of us, that He has a good plan for each one. Hope is a very concrete thing.”
