TORONTO, Canada (The Catholic Register) – Quaker and Christian Peacemaker Teams leader Tom Fox was remembered by Christians and Muslims together at a Mass in a Baghdad Roman Catholic parish March 12, the Sunday after his body was found.
Fox's body was found nearby the church on March 9.
Fifty-four-year-old American peace activist Fox was kidnapped along with Canadians Jim Loney, 41, and Harmeet Sooden, 32, and Englishman Norman Kember, 74, near Mosul, Iraq, Nov. 26, 74, by a group calling itself Swords of Righteousness.
British Special Forces found the bound Christian peace workers in a building north of Baghdad, the British Embassy in Baghdad announced March 23.
The memorial for Fox was not announced ahead of time, but was quietly incorporated into regular Sunday worship so as not to attract the attention of suicide bombers, Christian Peacemaker Teams member Alan Slater told The Catholic Register shortly after returning from six weeks on duty with Christian Peacekeeping Teams in Baghdad.
"We asked (the parish pastor) if we could have a service for our friend there, and he agreed," said Slater. "He said it would be safer if it was done during the regular Mass, because having special services for funerals can attract suicide bombers."
The peacekeeping team members posted a photograph of Fox outside the church March 12. About 50 Baghdad friends of Christian Peacekeeping Teams, Christian and Muslim, attended the Mass and memorial for Fox.
"We read some of (Fox's) writings and sang a hymn that he had changed some of the words to a little bit to suit himself," said Slater. "At the end, it was quite obvious that (pastor) Father Vincent just threw away the homily that he had prepared for that Sunday and simply asked for an end to the violence."
Local Muslims expressing condolences to the Western Christian peace activists living among them was the mirror image of peacekeeping team members visiting merchants in the nearby market a week earlier to express condolences after a car bomb killed a number of people there, according to Slater.
"There were several friends of mine killed in that bombing, people that we shopped from regularly. One old man that ran a vegetable stand, and we had become quite good friends, and he was just gone. The next day his son was back running the business," said the 70-year-old retired farmer from near Woodstock, Ont., who acted as the group's primary shopper through February and into March.
"We, of course, went to express our condolences to the people who were left and the people whose shops had been badly damaged — all kinds of glass had been blown out. And then about a week after that they were expressing their condolences to us because of the death of Tom Fox, a person whom they also knew quite well."
This was Slater's fourth tour of duty with the Christian Peacekeeping Teams in Baghdad. But, this time, the nearby bombing, continuing kidnap crisis and death of Fox has changed the farmer's perspective on peacekeeping teams' mission in Iraq.
"Before when I had been there, we had been there as observers of the horror of a war," he said. "We observed the human-rights abuses of the American armed forces and the chaos that the people were living through. And this time, with the kidnapping and the ultimate death of Tom Fox, I started to realize that we had shifted from being observers to being actual participants, victims, whatever you like."
Before leaving for Baghdad in January, Slater declared it would be his last trip to Iraq because of the difficulty of enduring long flights as he progresses into his 70s. But he's spent sleepless nights since returning and has found the experience draining.
"I've got to say, I've been wounded by this."
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Michael Snow is the associate editor of The Catholic Register in Toronto, Ont., Canada.
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