In 2012, Diane Foley's oldest son, James, was working as a freelance journalist in Syria when he was taken hostage by terrorists. After two years of torture, they murdered James and posted video of the atrocity online. Devastated and heartbroken, Diane's Catholic faith instilled her with the strength and guidance she needed to get through that experience. She shares her story in the book American Mother, co-authored with Colum McCann.
From his earliest years, Jim (as Diane calls him) was a good-hearted, easygoing child who went out of his way to help others. "One of the turning points for Jim," Diane recalled during a Christopher Closeup interview, "was when he went for his undergraduate work to Marquette University in Milwaukee because their ethos is: be the difference. . . . The university challenged him from freshman year to volunteer in the inner city. . . . It opened his eyes to the fact that there's a lot of poverty, there's people who don't have a mom or a dad or breakfast." As a result, Jim worked at Teach for America, volunteered at a care center for unwed mothers, and worked at Chicago's Cook County Jail helping inmates earn their high school diplomas.
Jim chose to become a journalist to help readers know and care about people in need and, eventually, people in conflict zones around the world. Diane believes his international focus stems from Jim having "three younger siblings who were in the Army, Air Force and Navy, and two of them were in Afghanistan and Iraq at the time."
Though Diane worried constantly about her sons in Iraq and Afghanistan, she admits she was "clueless about the risks that journalists take." That became evident in 2011 when Jim and several other freelancers working in Libya were taken hostage by Qadaffi loyalists. Unlike journalists for major outlets, freelancers do not have security teams to back them up, so the danger they face is high. Diane was shocked when she received the news about Jim's abduction. His brother Michael took a leave of absence from work to engage with the U.S. government and try to get help to secure Jim's release.
Meanwhile, Diane and her husband, John, relied on their faith for strength. She recalled, "I remember John and I going to the adoration chapel and praying. . . . It was like the Lord had been preparing me for this in so many ways. I became a Catholic not until I was 16. . . . I remember as a preteen, my dad had an office in our little town in New Hampshire, and I would go down to St. Bernard's Catholic Church. . . . I remember being drawn to the Blessed Mother, to the stillness and the sacred space. . . . No matter where in the world I've been, I've been able to find a Mass to go to and the Blessed Sacrament to sit before. What a gift! It's a treasure that I think often we Catholics forget about or take for granted perhaps."
When Jim was released after six weeks, he said that he could feel people's prayers lifting him up during his captivity. He also revealed that a fellow prisoner had passed some Scripture verses to him through a hole in the cell, allowing him to meditate on them. Though the entire experience could have prompted Jim to pursue a safer career, he instead found himself even more deeply committed to practicing "moral courage." What came next would test Diane's ability to practice the grace and mercy Jesus taught. I'll share that story in my next column.
This essay is a recent "Light One Candle"
column by Tony Rossi, Director of Communications, The Christophers; it is one of a series of
weekly columns that deal with a variety of topics and current
events.
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