Vigil downtown today offered prayers for Syrian, other refugees

YOUNGSTOWN

Six years ago, Kathleen Sauline was in Lakewood, Ohio, working in a garden when she met a woman from Damascus, Syria, who shared how fearful she was for the welfare of her daughter, son-in-law and four grandchildren.

“She was afraid they were going to be trapped there [at the start of the civil war in Syria]. It was horrible,” recalled Sauline, of Girard, an educator with Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Sauline doesn’t know what happened to the woman or her loved ones, but the woman’s story was a large part of the reason Sauline was among those who attended a prayer vigil for refugees this afternoon in front of the Thomas D. Lambros Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse on Market Street downtown.

In addition, terrorism from ISIS was ramping up in the war-torn country at that time, so the Syrian woman also feared that artwork, historic buildings and other national treasures would be destroyed, Sauline explained.

The peaceful and somber one-hour vigil was just before Christmas to call to mind that Jesus Christ was a refugee, and to stand in solidarity with refugees from Syria, Kenya, Nigeria and elsewhere around the world, many of whom have no place to live, noted Terry Vicars, event organizer.

“We embrace the refugees and stand with them, and we want to give them a welcome to our country,” he said.

Read more about the event in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.