James Foley: Beheading victim had deep faith

David McKay Wilson, dwilson3@lohud.com 11:18 p.m. EDT August 22, 2014

In this November 2012, file photo, posted on the website freejamesfoley.org, shows American journalist James Foley while covering the civil war in Aleppo, Syria. In a horrifying act of revenge for U.S. airstrikes in northern Iraq, militants with the Islamic State extremist group have beheaded Foley ? and are threatening to kill another hostage, U.S. officials say.(Photo: Nicole Tung/AP)

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The gruesome beheading of freelance journalist James Foley this week by a henchman affiliated with Islamic State brought me back to 2011, when I interviewed him for a profile I was writing for the alumni magazine at Marquette University.

That's the Catholic Jesuit college in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at which Foley deepened his Christian beliefs and earned a bachelor's degree in history.

Foley was a devout Christian who, unlike most journalists I've known during my almost four decades in the field, was unapologetic about his heart for social justice and the inspiration he found for his beliefs in the New Testament.

The editor at Marquette had commissioned me to tell the story of Foley's 45 days in captivity in Libya in the spring of 2011. He was a risk-taker, armed with a computer, note-pad, video camera and body armor he'd picked up while embedded with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan in 2009. He had entered Libya from its eastern border with Egypt at the time controlled by the rebels. He had no visa.

Traveling with a ragtag band of rebels during that nation's nascent civil war, he got caught in the crossfire of a gunfight, which killed a journalist at his side. Foley was detained by forces led by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Prayer, it turned out, was central to Foley's survival. He'd pray the rosary, saying 10 Hail Marys between each recitation of the Lord's Prayer, when he asked his Lord to deliver him from this very present evil. After a few days in jail, he recalled hearing a knocking on the wall of his cell. He put his ear to a wall socket and heard the muffled voice of a detained American contractor, who read to him from the Book of Matthew and asked that they pray together.

"In a very calm voice, he'd read me Scripture once or twice a day," Foley told me in 2011. "Then I'd pray to stay strong. I'd pray to soften the hearts of our captors. I'd pray to God to lift the burdens we couldn't handle. And I'd pray that our Moms would know we were OK."

That time, Foley was freed. He was ultimately delivered to the Tunisian border after he paid a $150 fine for entering the country without a visa. His release followed an international effort to secure his release, which included a national campaign led by his Marquette classmates, colleagues from Teach for America, along with friends and family from his New Hampshire home. An international online petition attracted close to 35,000 signatures. Prayer vigils popped up across the nation.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for his release.

Upon his return, Foley delved deeper into his Bible studies, focusing on those passages from Matthew that resonated through the wall of his Tripoli cell and taught that the world's burdens are eased though a life of faith. He also saw his 2011 release through the lens of Matthew's teachings. The efforts on his behalf were like the seeds sown far and wide by a farmer in a gospel parable.

"The farmer was putting out his efforts in all directions," he said. "Some of them hit fallow ground. Other seeds fell on good soil. We don't know exactly what seeds grew roots for us, but something worked on our behalf."

In a letter to the Marquette community, which accompanied my profile in Marquette Magazine, Foley described the power of prayer, passed down through generations.

Foley wrote: "I began to pray the rosary. It was what my mother and grandmother would have prayed. I said 10 Hail Marys between each Our Father. It took a long time, almost an hour to count 100 Hail Marys off on my knuckles. And it helped to keep my mind focused. Clare Gillis and I prayed together out loud. It felt energizing to speak our weaknesses and hopes together, as if in a conversation with God, rather than silently and alone."

He brimmed with gladness because that faith had set him free.

"My last night in Tripoli, I had my first Internet connection in 44 days and was able to listen to a speech Tom Durkin gave for me at the Marquette vigil," Foley wrote. "To a church full of friends, alums, priests, students and faculty, I watched the best speech a brother could give for another. It felt like a best man speech and a eulogy in one. It showed tremendous heart and was just a glimpse of the efforts and prayers people were pouring forth. If nothing else, prayer was the glue that enabled my freedom, an inner freedom first and later the miracle of being released during a war in which the regime had no real incentive to free us.

"It didn't make sense, but faith did."

At the time of our interview, Foley was floating along is a sort of journalistic limbo a familiar position for those of us who've made a living as a freelance journalists. He was doing some editing for GlobalPost, the online news service that bought his battlefield dispatches and had just returned from a gig at the Lakota tribe's Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where he taught a workshop in video production to young journalists.

His experience in Libya had not curbed his determination to document the horrors that roiled the region beset by yet another round of sectarian and tribal violence.

So in 2012, he was back on the battlefield, this time in Syria. But on Thanksgiving Day in 2012, he was captured.

President Obama condemns the beheading of American journalist James Foley by Islamic State militants, and says 'we will be vigilant and we will be relentless' in protecting Americans. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).

For months his whereabouts was unknown. The campaign to free him over the past two years was kept low-key and behind-the-scenes. At one point his captors made a ransom demand of $100 million. Then came an escalation of tensions, the U.S. bombing of ISIS strongholds in northern Iraq and finally, the spectacle of James Foley, garbed in orange, beheaded by his hooded killer, in the midst of the vast desert.

This time, God did not answer James Foley's prayers.

This time, James Foley was not delivered from evil.

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