THE
P RTAL
August 2017
Page 7
Syria and the Middle East
Jackie Ottaway and Ronald Crane meet John Pontifex
of Aid to the Church in Need at their HQ in Sutton in Surrey
J
ohn was born in London but grew up in Farnham in Surrey. He has four sisters and one of those
sisters is his twin. He is the youngest of them all. He went to school at Downside in Somerset and thereafter
to Christ Church College, Canterbury. There, he studied English and History. He did his degree before taking
a further diploma in journalism. He became a journalist for the Kent Messenger newspaper in Maidstone.
One Sunday someone from Aid to the Church in
Need came to his church to speak after Mass about
the charity. He was moved by the appeal and wrote to
Neville Kyrke-Smith, the National Director, enquiring
about a position with the charity. “Hey presto: I got
myself an interview,” he told us.
He began working for ACN in 2002 and has been
working there for nearly 15 years. In that time he has
been to many different countries around the world.
“I’ve been to China, to Pakistan, to India, Ethiopia,
Sudan, what is now South Sudan, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, which of course was the stronghold for ISIS and
Lebanon and also as far as Cuba, as well as several still is for the time being. This poor man was forced to
countries in Eastern Europe.
pay the Jizya Islamic tax. Then he had an accident; a
bomb landed near him and he was hurt.
“During that time, I have this opportunity to see
first-hand the suffering of Christians in different
“He was unable to continue his work as a car
situations. I have been profoundly moved by what I mechanic. The result of that was he couldn’t earn
have seen and heard – people whose lives and whose money and thereby couldn’t pay the Jizya tax. The
story are enormously rich with heart-felt experiences authorities t hen gave him a certificate of exemption.
but also full of suffering.
He kept that certificate of exemption and when the
authorities from ISIS came and visited him to find
“That suffering is something that is a great source of out why he hadn’t been paying his tax he was able to
sadness but also from it emerges a great sense of hope produce that certificate.
and a desire to overcome the problems that they face.
As a result of that, I have the chance to tell the story
“They weren’t at all satisfied with that, and he was
of those who suffer in such circumstances: stories that hit on the back of the head with the butt of a gun.
will stay with you for the rest of your life.
They threw his statue of Our Lady in the rubbish bin
and Elias protested. He was carted off to prison where
“As a result, we are able to really encourage our he was frogmarched to a room and bound to a cross
benefactors to stay with the charity and support it in placed up against the wall to the cell.
all the things that it does. One of the things we do,
which is worth noting, is telling the stories of some
“He wasn’t able to feed himself. They fed him with
people who have suffered. Among those are people mouldy bread by hand and then they told him they
whom I have met in Aleppo in Syria.
would kill him. This continued for about a month,
when a bomb landed on, or very close, to the jail. His
“I went there in January very shortly after the captors fled and he was able to make his escape.
ceasefire declared just before Christmas. I met up with
our project partners in Aleppo. They had been risking
“Someone unbound him and he was able to link up
their lives to tell the story of Aleppo. They also offer with his wife. He insisted that he go and pick up the
emergency aid – food, clothes, medicine and shelter, statue of Our Lady that ISIS had thrown in the rubbish
provided by Aid to the Church in Need. One such story bin. He was able to pick up the statue, or the pieces
is of a man named Elias (that’s the name he wants us to of it that had been thrown in the bin, and he and his
use for him) who had been living in Raqqa, northern family made their way to Aleppo on the back of a lorry.