Saint Mary Church, Aabra

Saint Mary Church in Aabra as it stood before 1985 — The church as the village remembers it — limestone walls, a tiled roof, and the bell tower that could be heard across the valley.

The ruins of Saint Mary Church after its destruction in 1985 — What the war left behind. Forty-one years later, the ground is still waiting.

More photographs, please. These two survive. Many others do not — not yet. They are in family albums and shoeboxes, in the hands of people who left Aabra decades ago: weddings and baptisms inside the church, the altar, the bell tower, the feast day in August. If you have even one, please write to us before it is lost.

A church on the hill above Aabra

Where it stands

Saint Mary sits at the top of the hill, looking out over Aabra, over Sidon, and past it to the Mediterranean.

Why it was built

Tradition holds that Jesus and his mother came to this place. The church was raised on the hill to commemorate it.

In the Gospels

Scripture records Jesus travelling into the region of Tyre and Sidon — the coast this hill looks down upon.

Matthew 15:21 · Mark 7:31

Our church was destroyed. Our faith was not.

In 1985, during the Lebanese war, Saint Mary was destroyed completely.

It was not the only one. The parish church in the centre of Aabra was levelled in the same war — and that one has since been rebuilt. It is where the village gathers today, for Mass, for weddings, for funerals.

The hill was left as it fell. For forty-one years the older church, the historic one, the one people climbed to, has been rubble and open ground.

Now the parish is rebuilding it: the same church, on the same site, to the same design. Not only walls, but a spiritual home for the generations that come after us.

Aabra has raised a church from its ruins once already. This is the second.

Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.

إِنْ لَمْ يَبْنِ الرَّبُّ الْبَيْتَ، فَبَاطِلاً يَتْعَبُ الْبَنَّاؤُونَ.
Psalm 127:1

While the site is being built, three things would help

The full campaign — the plans, the costs, and the ways to give — will be published here shortly. Until then:

Most urgent

Your photographs

Any picture of the old church: the facade, the bell tower, the altar — or a wedding, a baptism, a first communion taken inside it. A phone photograph of a print is perfectly good. These are the images we cannot recreate, and the people who hold them are not getting younger.

Just as valuable

Your memories

The walk up the hill, the feast days, what the view was like from the terrace, the day it was destroyed. Names, dates, the small details. We are writing the history of Saint Mary while there are still people who can tell it.

Takes a minute

Tell us you are there

Send us your name and where you are now. Aabra's families are spread across four continents, and knowing where you are is how we reach you when the campaign opens.

Write to us

One address reaches the committee. Photographs, memories, questions, or an offer to help — all of it is welcome.

info@aabra.com

هل لديكم صور قديمة للكنيسة أو ذكريات عنها؟ نرجو مراسلتنا على العنوان أعلاه. كل صورة تساعدنا في إعادة بناء بيتنا.

Donations. The channels for giving are being finalised now, and will be published on this page as soon as they are confirmed. If you would like to contribute before then, write to us and we will reply personally.