Sources of the news: Radiovaticana, The Tidings, Ankawa.com
Since February 17 2009, when Mar Joseph Ignatius III Younan was enthroned in Lebanon as the new patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church the see of the Diocese of Our Lady of Deliverance of Newark for the Syriac Catholics in the United States and Canada that he had chaired since 1996 was vacant. On April 12 2010, the Holy Father, Benedict XVI has appointed as bishop of that Diocese the Chorepiscopus Yousef Benham Habash, parish priest of the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Los Angeles.
Msgr. Habash was born in Qara Qosh (Iraq) on June 1, 1951. After the first studies in his native village Msgr. Habash entered at the age of 10 in the monastery of Mar Benham and at that of 14 in the seminary of Saint John in Mosul. After serving in the Iraqi army for a year and a half, and due to the closure of the seminary in Mosul, on September 23 1972 he entered the patriarchal seminary of Charfé in Lebanon and later studied philosophy and theology at the University of the Holy Spirit in Kaslik, in Lebanon too. Back in Iraq he was ordained priest on August 31, 1975, in the church of the Virgin in Qara Qosh by the then bishop of Mosul, Msgr. Cyrille Emmanuel Benni. In 1983 he was sent to serve the faithful in the Sacred Heart Church in Basra but in 1992 he went back to Qara Qosh. On June 14 1996 he became a priest of the newly established (November 6, 1995) Diocese of Our Lady of Deliverance, which is based in Union City, New Jersey. After serving the Syriac Catholic Church also in Chicago (Illinois) Msgr. Habash was transferred to the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Los Angeles.
In an interview on last March Msgr. Habash recalled the worsening situation of the Christian community in Iraq after the 2003 war. While recognizing the harshness of Saddam Hussein’s regime against the Iraqi population, the bishop recalled how "before 2003 in Mosul there were not the rivers of blood like today. Christians were not dying like insects." Recently, explained the bishop, Christians have become victims of persecution because they are considered by many Muslims as West’s allies and beacuse they are caught in the middle of the struggle for supremacy in northern Iraq between Arabs and Kurds.
According to the Patriarch Mar Ignatius Joseph III Younan 45% of the 160,000 Syriac Catholics in the world who have their origins in the Middle East are living outside its borders.
