The Virgin of Fez

Fez (Fès), Imperial City, Morocco

In the heart of the most sacred city of Magrebi Islam, a small Catholic community keeps alive the flame of faith around the Church of San Francisco of Assisi. Fez, a city of sages and saints, of ulemas and of artisans, is also the soil where in the 13th century a group of minor friars shed their blood by faith. The Virgin accompanies her children in that ancient and deep city.

Fez, the sacred city of the Maghreb

Fez is one of the most fascinating and oldest cities in the Islamic world. Founded in the late eighth or early ninth century - tradition attributes it to Idris II, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad by maternal line and founder of the idrisian dynasty - it quickly became the spiritual and intellectual heart of the Maghreb. His medina, Fes el-Bali, is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the best preserved medieval ensembles in the world: a maze of alleys, madrasa, mosques, zouias and artisan workshops where life goes on to a large extent as it did centuries ago.

The soul of Fez is the University of Al-Qarawiyin, founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, a woman of Tunisian origin settled in the city. Considered by some historians the oldest university in the world in continuous operation, Al-Qarawiyin was for centuries the main center of theological and legal formation of Magrebi Islam. Students from all over the Muslim world came to their classrooms, and from it came judges, theologians, statesmen and scientists who left their mark in the history of the Mediterranean.

Fez was also, for centuries, a city of coexistence - sometimes tense, enriching always - between diverse communities. The Mellah, the historical Jewish quarter, retains the memory of a Sephardic community that lived in Fez for centuries until most of it emigrated after the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and the independence of Morocco in 1956. The Jews of Fez - the emphasis - left a deep impression on the language, gastronomy and trade of the city. The Christian presence was much more ephemeral and difficult, but not non-existent.

The Christian and Franciscan presence in Fez

Islam reached North Africa in the 7th century and radically transformed the religious landscape of the region. The Church of North Africa, which had given the world figures of the size of Agustín de Hipona or Cipriano de Cartago, gradually disappeared in the following centuries, without us being able to determine exactly when the last remaining indigenous Christian presence was extinguished. When the Franciscans arrived in Fez in the 13th century, they found no established Christian community: they entered an Islamic city, fully aware of the risk that that involved.

The Order of the Minor Friars, founded by Francis of Assisi in 1209, was distinguished from its origins by the missionary impulse and the desire to bring the Gospel to non-Christian lands. Francis himself tried to preach the Sultan of Egypt in 1219, in the Fifth Crusade, in a gesture that history has recognized as a pioneer of interreligious dialogue. This spirit of encounter, together with the evangelical radicality, characterized the Franciscans who ventured in the Maghreb.

The Franciscan mission in Morocco officially began around 1219- 1220, under the impulse of Francis himself and with the support of Cardinal Humolino (future Gregorio IX). The first friars came with the intention of preaching the Gospel among Muslims, knowing perfectly well that Islamic law considered apostasy - and incitement to it - a capital crime. Fez was one of the scenarios of that inaugural mission.

The Franciscan martyrs and their passage through Fez

In January 1220, a group of Franciscan friars - Berardo de Carbio, Pedro de Castiel, Acursio, Adjuto and Oton - was executed in Marrakech by order of the Merini Sultan, after a period of public preaching that the authorities considered an unacceptable violation of Islamic norms. Before arriving in Marrakech, these friars passed through several cities in northern Morocco, including probably Fez, where they preached openly and were expelled or imprisoned before continuing to the south.

His death was the first documented martyrdom of the Franciscan Order. Francis of Assisi, when he heard the news, exclaimed according to the tradition that he now had true martyrs. His remains were taken to Portugal by the infant Don Pedro - the brother of King Alfonso II - where they were deposited in the church of Santa Cruz de Coimbra. They were canonized in 1481 by Pope Sixto IV. They are known as the Five Martyrs of Morocco or the Holy Martyrs of Marrakech.

The memory of these martyrs was linked to Fez in a way that transcends mere geography. Fez was the imperial city, the heart of the political and religious power of the sultanate; preaching there was a deliberate provocation, a testimony that faith does not recognize human borders. The Church of San Francisco de Assis in Fez, founded centuries later, bears the name of the founder of those martyrs as a tribute to this history of courage and fidelity.

The Catholic community of Fez today

The Catholic community of Fez is currently modest in number. It consists mainly of diplomats and officials of international organizations, NGO partners, teachers and researchers linked to the city's academic institutions, and an increasing number of sub-Saharan workers who have made Fez a stage or destination in their migration trajectories.

The Church of San Francisco of Assisi is the meeting center of this community. It is one of the few Catholic temples that operate in Fez, a city with an extraordinarily high Islamic religious density: mosques, madrasas, zouias of Sufi cofradies and mausoleums of saints form the spiritual fabric of the medina. In this context, the small Franciscan church does not compete or seek to compete: it is simply there, discreet and faithful, for those who need a place to pray in Christian tradition.

The Franciscans who serve in Fez continue the tradition of their founders in a different spirit: not that of the confrontational preaching of the 13th century, but that of dialogue, service and silent testimony. The presence of the Church in Morocco, endorsed by the Archbishop of Rabat, is exercised within the legal framework of the country, which guarantees foreigners the right to practice their religion but does not allow proselytism among Moroccan citizens.

Our Lady on mission land

In a city like Fez - where every street, every source, every door remembers the depth of Islamic tradition - Marian devotion has a particular texture. It is not the exuberant devotion of the great European pilgrimages: it is a collected, intimate devotion that the faithful carries with him as a discreet treasure.

The Virgin Mary accompanies the Christian who lives on mission land in a way that may only be fully understood in that situation. Being away from the family places of worship, from the religious parties that mark the pace of the year, from the broad community that sustains faith in times of doubt, makes the relationship with the Mother of God more direct and more essential. She is the thread that unites the faithful with the universal Church when the visible structures of that Church are scarce or distant.

In Fez, a city of Islamic saints and Koranic sages, Mary's presence also recalls something that interreligious dialogue has been making clear in recent decades: that Islam is not alien to the figure of Mary. The Quran devotes to her the sura 19, which bears her name - Maryam - and presents her as the purest of women, chosen by God above all female creatures. This coranic veneration of Mary is not identical to Christian devotion, but it creates a space of resonance that should not be ignored.

Spiritual reflection

Fez is a city that invites contemplation. Their labyrintic alleys force them to go slowly, to get lost, to trust that there is a path even if it is not seen. Its madrasa, with its marble courts and its cedar wood domes, are places designed for silence and study. Their mosques, to which the non-Muslim traveller cannot enter, remember that there are sacred spaces that do not belong to the whole world, that sacraality demands respect and distance.

For the Christian who visits or resides in Fez, experience has some involuntary spiritual school. You learn to pray in a context that does not help or hinder you, but is simply indifferent. You learn to find God without the crutches of family images, collective rites, music and odors of the known churches. In short, you learn to have a more naked and personal faith.

The Virgin of Fez - if we can thus call the Marian presence that the small Catholic community keeps alive in that city - is not a monumental image or a sanctuary of pilgrimage. It is simply the mother who is present when the children meet, even though they are few and even far from home. And that's, maybe, enough.