A Jesuit priest says he has a \u201cmuch larger perspective\u201d of the crisis of war after fleeing the Holy Land at the outset of U.S. and Israeli aggressions against Iran.<\/p>\n
Father Anthony Wieck, SJ, told EWTN News he was leading a pilgrimage of about 20 Catholics in the Holy Land when the war began on Feb. 28.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had just spent a week in Galilee and prayed our way through the holy sites of Jesus\u2019 teaching and miracles,\u201d Wieck said, describing the region as \u201ca lovely land [God] created for himself to enjoy on this earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group arrived in Jerusalem on Feb. 26, he said, and the next day word began to spread of the need to evacuate from the region. Several pilgrims were able to leave immediately, Wieck said, while others who attempted to leave the next day were unable to get a flight out and eventually had to return to the pilgrim group.<\/p>\n
Ben Gurion International Airport \u201cis not a safe place to be because there are military installations near the airport,\u201d he said. \u201cIranian missiles were being sent that way, and our people … were taken into the bomb shelter five stories down below the airport.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wieck said that even as the conflict broke out, his group still toured holy sites, including the Church of the Pater Noster, where tradition holds that Christ taught the disciples to pray the Our Father. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were instructed by our guide to continue the tour and to simply seek cover whenever the sirens went off,\u201d he said, pointing out that \u201cthose living in Jerusalem are so used to warning sirens there that they have much less fear than we do. They\u2019re observant but not fearful. And we were trusting them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The priest was offering a chanted Mass at the Dominus Flevit Church while explosions sounded in the distance as Israel\u2019s Iron Dome intercepted Iranian missiles.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was scary, yes,\u201d Wieck said. \u201cBut I continued the Mass with trust, and after Communion (before the final prayer) asked all pilgrims to pray for a couple minutes regarding where the Lord was in all of this situation.\u201d<\/p>\n After Mass, a group of pilgrims from Kansas joined them in the church amid sirens and explosions in the surrounding region. <\/p>\n \u201cIt struck me as supremely important that we not make decisions based on fear but on faith,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The priest\u2019s group took a truncated walking tour of Jerusalem, he said, which \u201cbecame eerily quiet that evening.\u201d<\/p>\n The tour company ordered them to evacuate the following morning.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Departing for Jordan, the group found itself stuck amid a crush of evacuations in the area. \u201cA typical two-hour trip to Amman, Jordan, took us seven hours,\u201d Wieck said. And while the group initially \u201cfelt much safer being outside of Jerusalem,\u201d they eventually felt \u201clocked in\u201d at their hotel, particularly amid mass flight cancellations. <\/p>\n Jordanians in the area kept assuring the Americans that the country\u2019s King Abdullah II would protect them. \u201cNot feeling the same allegiance to their king, my trust was in God,\u201d the priest said.<\/p>\n The U.S. Department of State provided military evacuations to Americans in the area. \u201cLittle by little, our pilgrims found an occasional flight that [shuttled] them out of the war zone,\u201d Wieck said. <\/p>\n The priest and one other pilgrim, a religious from Phoenix, were the last from their group to remain in Jordan before they took a flight with Royal Jordanian Airlines on March 4. Wieck said the pilot took \u201cgreat efforts to circumvent Israeli airspace.\u201d <\/p>\n The air carrier \u201cwas bold enough to keep to their travel plans despite the threats,\u201d Wieck said, describing the airline as \u201cmy new favorite.\u201d <\/p>\n Wieck told EWTN News that he \u201cwould not say that I was stellar in my response to what God was doing here.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to pray much but felt so much stress and trauma around me that it was truly difficult,\u201d he said. \u201cI was exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet during the frightening evacuation, he said, \u201chundreds of people\u201d back home were lifting up the pilgrims with prayers and sacrifices. <\/p>\n \u201cThey knew our plight was becoming a bit more grave,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Back home in the U.S., Wieck, who lives in Louisiana, said he was still reflecting on what happened but said the harrowing ordeal gave him \u201ca much larger perspective to have experienced profoundly how much we need the help of our brothers and sisters in times of crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was truly a Catholic experience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThough as humans we usually don\u2019t carry our crosses in times of crisis all that well, our brothers and sisters in the faith can see us through. That was my experience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cHow wonderful it is to be Catholic!\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Jesuit priest says he has a \u201cmuch larger perspective\u201d of the crisis of war after fleeing the Holy Land at the outset of U.S. and Israeli aggressions against Iran. Father Anthony Wieck, SJ, told EWTN News he was leading a pilgrimage of about 20 Catholics in the Holy Land when the war began on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":40723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"bron":[41],"class_list":["post-40722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nieuws","bron-cna"],"acf":[],"featured_image_urls":{"medium":"https:\/\/explorecatholic.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/40722-my-trust-was-in-god-priest-recounts-flight-from-holy-land-amid-iranian-conflict-300x225.jpg","large":"https:\/\/explorecatholic.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/40722-my-trust-was-in-god-priest-recounts-flight-from-holy-land-amid-iranian-conflict-1024x768.jpg","thumbnail":"https:\/\/explorecatholic.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/40722-my-trust-was-in-god-priest-recounts-flight-from-holy-land-amid-iranian-conflict-150x150.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/explorecatholic.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/40722-my-trust-was-in-god-priest-recounts-flight-from-holy-land-amid-iranian-conflict-768x576.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/explorecatholic.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/40722-my-trust-was-in-god-priest-recounts-flight-from-holy-land-amid-iranian-conflict-1536x1152.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/explorecatholic.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/40722-my-trust-was-in-god-priest-recounts-flight-from-holy-land-amid-iranian-conflict-2048x1536.jpg","Inhoud breed":"https:\/\/explorecatholic.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/40722-my-trust-was-in-god-priest-recounts-flight-from-holy-land-amid-iranian-conflict-860x645.jpg","echo_preview_image":"https:\/\/explorecatholic.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/40722-my-trust-was-in-god-priest-recounts-flight-from-holy-land-amid-iranian-conflict-195x146.jpg"},"appp_media":null,"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Truly a Catholic experience\u2019<\/h2>\n