SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina With eggs and tulips selling for $3apiece and a small chicken fetching $33, Sarajevans face a sparsesecond Easter under siege.
But this year, the city's Roman Catholics can at least getsafely to mass. A United Nations-brokered cease-fire has held fornearly eight weeks.
In this multiethnic city where Muslims were the majority, Easternever was a holiday of great significance. Only about 17 percent ofSarajevo's pre-war population of 600,000 were Catholic Croats.
But for those remaining in the besieged city, Easter is likelyto mean more now than before Bosnia's war broke out two years ago -Catholic officials say attendance at mass grew with the fighting.
Mirko Mejdandzic, a Franciscan friar who celebrates mass in abullet-pocked, sandbagged store in the front-line suburb of Dobrinja,said several hundred people managed to attend services every Sunday,even during the worst of the fighting.
He will celebrate Easter mass in the makeshift sanctuary, whichis surrounded by shell-blasted apartment buildings.
In a grocery store-warehouse converted into a church in theAlipasino Polje neighborhood, the Catholic relief agency Caritasdistributed flour and vegetable oil Saturday. A woman prayed beforea coffin bearing the effigy of the crucified Christ in the sanctuaryon the floor above.
Nearly all of Sarajevo's 380,000 residents are dependent on foodaid, which enters the city via a UN airlift. This Easter, after twoyears of eating mainly dried beans, rice, macaroni and cannedmackerel and corned beef, people of all religions long for meat,chicken and fresh vegetables.
No comments:
Post a Comment