Source: Asia News
AsiaNews talks to a group of Iraqi Christians who are back in Italy after a long visit to northern Iraq, the area in which two Syro-Catholic priests were recently abducted. Christians experiencing persecution in Baghdad and Mosul are fleeing to this area, but their flight is causing a lot of problems. They face discrimination; their arrival is pushing prices up, especially rents; and their presence is putting trains on local health services. Under the circumstances the Church is drawing strength from Fr Ragheed Gani’s martyrdom. Every Sunday a large number of people join his parents at his tomb in Karamles to pray for peace.
The abduction of two other priests in Mosul highlights the plight of Iraq’s Christian community, caught between terrorism and religious persecution. Christians have fled Mosul and Baghdad for northern Iraq as a result of daily death threats and the constant danger of suicide bombers, but what the find is equally tragic and difficult to bear.
The Nineveh Plain and Iraqi Kurdistan have become the community’s last place of resort but Christian villages are increasingly overcrowded, a situation which is creating social tensions and causing problems of coexistence among people whose main dream is going home.
Despite being targeted by terrorists and common criminals now more than ever, Christian Churches have continued their activities, albeit in a more limited way, “with great faith and certainty that a new Iraq will be born out of all this blood one day;” a hope Catholic sources in northern Iraq tell AsiaNews which is “nurtured day after day by the sacrifice of Fr Ragheed Gani whose tomb is visited every Sunday by young and old alike, seeking the strength to go on.”
More to come.
Despite being targeted by terrorists and common criminals now more than ever, Christian Churches have continued their activities, albeit in a more limited way, “with great faith and certainty that a new Iraq will be born out of all this blood one day;” a hope Catholic sources in northern Iraq tell AsiaNews which is “nurtured day after day by the sacrifice of Fr Ragheed Gani whose tomb is visited every Sunday by young and old alike, seeking the strength to go on.”
More to come.
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