Johnny and George Jallouf are twins. Born in Aleppo in 1996, they grew up in a large family, and were the youngest of five siblings. Their parents belonged to the large Aleppo Christian community of about 200,000 people before the war. Today, after the conflict has torn the country apart and forced thousands to flee, there are just under 20,000 left. Yet the good Lord, as the two brothers recount, has never stopped acting even in the most difficult times. They know this well as it was under the bombs that both their priestly vocations matured, without knowing about the other, and they are now Friars Minor of the Custody of the Holy Land. They were ordained two weeks ago at the St. Francis Church in Aleppo, and their uncle, Fr. Hanno Jallouf, who was recently appointed by Pope Francis as bishop of the city, blessed their consecration. "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. All these things formed us and sustained us in our life here. We Christians, in fact, are a minority in Syria," they recount in this interview.



Johnny is first to speak: "I received God's call when I 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. Studying medicine was my dream. When the war exploded every dream or project seemed to collapse. I felt an emptiness, a fear inside that almost paralyzed me. I vividly remember the day: I was 17 years old and in a moment of particular despair I began to recite the Lord's Prayer. When I got to the phrase ‘Thy will be done,’ I realized that those words had to become flesh, to be concrete, tangible. I asked God, ‘What do you want me to do? I want to be happy, but tell me how.’" Aleppo was being bombed in those months; Isis, rebels, the army and the Kurds invaded the city, fighting each other. “People were dying around me, we all know we might die. I was praying and reading St. Theresa's book, The Story of a Soul, meditating on the Gospel in search of answers." A second phrase, after the Lord's Prayer, also struck him, "Give me souls and take away the rest." "I understood at that moment that the body is nothing without a soul 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. At that moment I began a journey of discernment that led me to the priesthood. However, I did not understand it on my own, it was within the relationship with so many friends who accompanied me and to whom I always asked so many questions. They were friars of the Custody of the Holy Land, nuns, priests. I was never alone."

George, his brother, had also always had a fondness for those who gave their lives to God. "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. It was a gladness that did not wane even during the war years. I lived this question, this desire to be completely for Christ, in silence and discretely. Johnny asked everyone; I, on the other hand, was initially on my own. But like him, I resisted a bit. As a teenager I even wanted to be a great director! But the attractive force of the Lord was much greater." Once they embarked on their vocational journey, the two lived between Jerusalem and Italy. When the violent earthquake struck Turkey and Syria last year, leaving thousands dead, the twins decided to return. And they chose Aleppo as the place of their priestly ordination.

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"We did it out of gratitude. A gratitude for our parents, for our mother who lost a daughter in her womb before us and who always entrusted us to Our Lady, out of gratitude for the Church and the Christian people who educated us in the faith. Coming back here was a way of telling our people not to be afraid because we are certain that the Lord loves us each of us, that He has a good plan for each one. Hope is a very concrete thing." Fr. George will remain in the city as assistant pastor at the church where he had been an altar boy. Fr. Johnny will return to Jerusalem as assistant director of the Magnificat Conservatory. They say that they are ready to go where the Spirit blows, "ready to respond to God who calls us within reality, whatever it may be."