Yaroun’s Saint-George School and the Hidden Cost of War on Education in Southern Lebanon

Newsroom (08/05/2026 Gaudium Press )  The shock was sudden and violent. It was not simply a matter of a building collapsing. According to Mother Gladis Sabbagh, Superior General of the congregation of the Basilian Salvatorian Sisters of Our Lady of the Annunciation, what fell in Yaroun was also part of a lived mission and a deeply rooted meaning for the people there: “It was not only a school, but a profoundly rooted symbol in people’s lives. The nuns felt that it was not only a building that collapsed, but also part of their mission.”

On her phone, she keeps a slightly blurred photo showing, in the distance, a shape that appears to be an Israeli bulldozer demolishing a structure already partly ruined. “It is our Christian school in the village of Yaroun. The snapshot was sent to me by a resident of the nearby town of Rmeich, one of the three Christian towns still not entirely evacuated.”

The school in Yaroun was called Saint-George. It was founded in 1972 by the Salvatorian Sisters and—through its 500 students—became a true point of reference across the Bint Jbeil district in southern Lebanon. “It played a role in strengthening basic education,” Mother Sabbagh recalls for our newspaper, “in a region often lacking resources, building a shared identity among residents and becoming a center for social and cultural activity.”

Over time, however, insecurity began to spread through the region. Families fled to safer places, and in 2010 the school was closed. Still, no one in Yaroun imagined that it would later be fully torn down by Israeli forces, “with mechanical shovels.” Mother Sabbagh describes the feeling that followed as a collective loss: “There was a sense of collective grief: the school was the memory of childhood, of a generation. Our feelings were not only about the pain of losing a building, but about the meaning, the identity, and the role that school held in people’s lives.”

And perhaps the same kind of pain surfaced again as the war intensified. During the Israeli attacks of 2024–2025, the monastery where the Salvatorian Sisters lived was also bombarded. “At that time, we sisters left Yaroun,” Mother Sabbagh says, explaining that they transferred to their mother house in the village of Joun. “We did it because all the residents of Yaroun had already gone to quieter zones.”

Yaroun has now become a ghost village. Among its empty, eerie streets, witnesses say the only moving presence seems to be the bulldozers. At times, people in Rmeich report they can even hear the sound.

The damage from the Israeli missiles, Mother Sabbagh notes, did not affect only the Christian school. “They hit homes and public infrastructure like roads, water and electricity networks—completely destroyed. And then religious and social buildings were damaged as well: churches, parish halls, sanctuaries, mosques.”

She describes the same fate across other villages in the south. “I think, for example, of Aïtaroun, Maroun el-Ras, Blida,” she lists. People there continue to flee toward destinations that—at least for now—have not yet become targets of the raids: the north of Beirut, Saida, and Tyre, among others. “Some of this poor population found shelter with their relatives or in structures provided by the state.”

In the images of her school—now flattened—Mother Sabbagh reads a concrete metaphor for a war that often makes headlines without accounting for its deeper effects. “Conflicts don’t only involve the present; they transform the future of an entire generation. Protecting education during wartime is not a luxury—it is a fundamental humanitarian imperative, so that children do not pay for what has absolutely nothing to do with them.”

For Yaroun, the demolition of Saint-George is not only the end of a physical place. It represents how war can reach into the foundation of daily life: learning, community continuity, and the ability to imagine a different future.

• Raju Hasmukh with files from https://www.osservatoreromano.va/