RANIA WEEPS WITH THEM: AN EMBRACE FOR THE FAMILIES OF CHRISTIANS KILLED IN JORDAN
The queen visited families affected by the Hammoud church attack with Salma and Rajwa. Those images speak straight to the heart: the courage to stay beside immense grief.
You look at those images and instinctively lower your voice. Queen Rania of Jordan is standing with women who have just lost someone. She embraces them, visibly moved. Her daughter Salma and daughter-in-law Rajwa are beside her. Before them are families whose lives have changed completely in these past few days.
We are used to seeing photographs of Rania at official meetings, on visits, in outfits that make the newspaper pages. Here our eyes settle on tears and closeness. On that familiar gesture we make when someone we love is hurting and words feel too small: holding them close.
The visit took place on Sunday 25 October. Images circulated in the following days, bringing the grief of Hammoud’s community and the queen’s presence beside the families to audiences further afield.
In Hammoud, a community mourns its loved ones
We are in southern Jordan, in Karak Governorate. On Friday 23 October, gunmen attacked St George’s Greek Orthodox Church in Hammoud during a funeral. Nine people lost their lives; others were injured.
A funeral. That alone makes us pause. People had gathered to say goodbye, to pray, to accompany a family. Violence reached them in a moment that should have been protected and respected.
We often think of churches as places we enter when we need room to breathe. We sit in a pew and entrust a fear, a name, a question to God. Knowing that a community was attacked in a place of prayer touches us for that reason too: we feel how precious it is to gather without fear.
Rania went to them, with Salma and Rajwa
Two days after the attack, Rania met victims’ relatives at the Hammoud Charitable Society. The queen’s office and Jordan’s news agency Petra confirm the visit. Princess Salma bint Abdullah II and Princess Rajwa Al Hussein accompanied her.
The queen offered condolences and prayers for the nine people killed and the recovery of the injured. In the images of the visit, emotion takes the place of ceremony. King Abdullah also visited the wounded in hospital.
In those images, the families hold our attention. Grief needs people willing to come close, listen and offer support. Their pain will continue after the cameras have gone. Closeness will matter most if it lasts.
Some embraces help you face one more minute
Perhaps you have experienced it. You lost someone, or received news that took your breath away. People around you were searching for something to say, while all you wanted was a shoulder to lean on.
An embrace can offer a small space in which to put down the weight for a moment. You can cry. You can be silent. You can stop searching for an answer when someone asks how you are.
That is the thought Rania’s gestures leave with us. We cannot know what the women she met felt. But we can recognise the gentleness of someone drawing close and sharing their emotion. And remember how much we need one another on the hardest days.
A prayer for Hammoud’s Christians
This story brings us close to a wounded Christian community. To people who had gathered in their church and families now facing an absence. Rania’s visit and her prayers for the victims make visible a closeness that reaches across religious differences.
For those of us who carry God in our hearts, our thoughts turn to those families. To people in hospital. To those waiting for news. To those who will have to return to that church carrying the fear of what happened.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted,” we read in Matthew’s Gospel. It is a promise to hold onto even when prayer becomes difficult. Even when all we can manage is, “Lord, help us.”
We can entrust these people to God without seeking easy explanations for their suffering. Ask for peace for those who died, care for the injured and support for those left behind. And strength for the whole community to look after one another.
The “I’m here” we can offer too
The images come from far away, yet they may bring someone close to mind. A friend going through bereavement. A colleague back at work after a loss. Someone we heard crying and then, caught up in our days, called less and less.
Perhaps today we can write to her. Ask whether she would like a visit, offer to go along on an errand, bring something for dinner. Small gestures, chosen by listening to what she needs.
In Hammoud, nine lives have been cut short, and families deserve our full attention. From this visit we carry Rania’s embrace in our hearts, together with the thought of those who received it. For them, a prayer today. For people suffering beside us, a presence renewed tomorrow.
