By Baghdadhope
The French proposal to accept 500 Iraqi Christian refugees is provoking a bitter controversy at home. According to PRESS TV the initiative received the approval of Mgr. Marc Stenger, the bishop of Troyes and president of Pax Christi France who in February led the visit of a Franco-Italian delegation to Kurdistan. The bishop, while acknowledging that all Iraqis are experiencing a difficult situation, added that it is worse for Christians.
Opposite is the opinion of Mr. Pierre Henry, head of the French Terre d'Asile organization who underlined the risk inherent in ensuring the refugee status on the base of religion. To support the view of Pierre Henry is also the statement that Inter Radio reported by the Syriac bishop of Mosul (the name of the bishop is not mentioned and it is so uncertain if he is the Catholic bishop, Mgr. George Qas Mousa or the Orthodox one, Mor Gregorious Shamoun Saliba, note by Baghdadhope), who underlined that the Iraqi Christian community would encourage the emigration of young people who, instead, could in the future help the reconstruction of their country.
The issue of Iraqi Christians fleeing the country has been a major issue for the media since years ago, when it became an apparently unstoppable haemorrhage to which the death of Mgr. Rahho gave new impetus. With regards to such a situation, however, the statements are practically unanimous, and supported by the Vatican: “we must stop it".
To speak so are the bishops, the senior prelates to whom the media give voice, those who, rightly in their position, defend the millennary Christian presence in Iraq appealing to the "temporal precedence" which dates back to well before the arrival of Islam. Those who see in the diaspora the loss of values, traditions, and ancestral language that always kept united the community since it became a minority.
To speak so are the bishops, the senior prelates to whom the media give voice, those who, rightly in their position, defend the millennary Christian presence in Iraq appealing to the "temporal precedence" which dates back to well before the arrival of Islam. Those who see in the diaspora the loss of values, traditions, and ancestral language that always kept united the community since it became a minority.
But what is people’s opinion? There is no need to read statements about it. Many Iraqi Christians have expressed it through facts, by their becoming refugees. The contrast between the appeals to remain and the reality of leaving is clear. And this will be one of the many problems the church will have to face in Iraq. Because, even though this may sounds as blasphemous to the ears of many, those who oppose to values, tradition, language the simple chance to live could be more than we think.
It is painful but realistic to admit that being a Christian does not necessarily mean for anyone to sacrifice himself or his loved ones. That the words of the Holy Father dedicated to missionary martyrs whose work should be seen as an incentive to testify boldly the faith and the hope in Christ who "on the Cross won forever the power of hatred and violence with the omnipotence of His love" may not touch the hearts of those who since years ago have been obliged to live with that hatred and violence. That still today, and it is the testimony of Mgr.Luis Sako, the Chaldean archbishop of Kirkuk, many Christians are forced to choose whether to pay the 10000 dollars tax for protection (jizia), to see their homes destroyed or a relative killed. That there are mothers who don’t care about the reconstruction of the country because they don’t believe in it and who consider the agonizing pain of the separation from a son always preferable to his death or to an uncertain future.
This is the reality in Iraq. Another challenge for a Church already exhausted.