Frans van der Lugt

Born: April 10, 1938

Died: April 7, 2014

Before his murder in Homs, a war-torn city less than 200 miles away from Amman, Frans had lived and ministered in Syria for nearly 50 years. He considered Syria his home and refused to flee when the civil war came and left Homs destroyed and its population starving. He was 75 when a masked man shot him in the head in the garden of the Jesuit residence on April 7, 2014.

Many might wonder how God’s kingdom could be built in a city devastated by war and among a majority-Muslim population. But as Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke, the kingdom of God is not simply a place we can see or that we reach at the end of time. Rather it is something that can be built “among us” (Luke 17:20–21) and, as the theologian Origen said, “in our heart.” This is a truth that Father Frans’ life and legacy made known.

—Jordan Denari Duffner