A little girl — maybe four years old — looks at you with disappointment. She wishes the boys with her didn’t cut in line for food, as the American photographer of this scene, Stephen M. Rasche, described it to me. (He assured me that the adults, including the photographer, attended to her hunger immediately.) Also in the gallery is a photo of that same girl exuding joy. It’s almost as if she’s expressing gratitude to the viewer for paying attention, even for a few minutes. She’s a displaced person, which is the focus of the exhibit running during the month of July at the Sheen Center for Thought and Culture. The girl is a Christian in northern Nigeria, where it can be a risk to go to Mass or be known as a Christian.
Among the Displaced: Photographs of Iraq and Nigeria is the first time that Rasche is showing just a few of the thousands of photos he has taken while working with persecuted Christians. One of them, also taken last year, is of a beautiful woman who lost one of her eyes and went blind as a result of an attack by Boko Haram terrorists. She now lives in a housing development for both Christians and Muslims established by the Catholic Diocese of Yola. The photo makes clear her pain — and also that the terrorists never robbed her of her dignity.
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