Following the text of the speech by Msgr. Philip Najim for the Ecumenical meeting “La speranza alla prova” Rome, October 28, 2008
Translated by Baghdadhope
Translated by Baghdadhope
The Church of the East is one of the oldest churches, dating back to the first century AD and from the beginning it was a church devoted to mission and martyrdom.
As its Patriarch, Cardinal Delly, told, we are the children of martyrs, and the blood of our fathers and our grandfathers, shed for the faith, still cries to God and asks for help, and we hope that it can protect us from the evil to keep our faith that is our wealth. The name of the Chaldean church is also the Church of the East because it was born to the east of Euphrates, namely to the east of the border of the Roman Empire.
It was founded by the first apostles such as St. Thomas, his disciples Mar Addai and Mar Mari and the disciples of them who suffered martyrdom in Mesopotamia where they brought the Gospel to their brothers living in the Partian-Sassanid kingdom.
Their blood has become a seed for Christians whose number increased day by day.
Christians, for their loyalty and righteousness, had important tasks in the sassanid kingdom until when they began to be hated by the rulers who relieved them of their responsabilities and persecuted them for their faith.
During the reign of Shabor II it began a period of 40 years of persecution (339-379 AD)that made people call the Church of the East the church of martyrs. But we could also say the church of patient faithful because the problems for Christians did not end with the fall of sassanid empire.
When, in mid-seventh century, Arab Muslims fought the Persian, the Christians saw in the winners those who would free them from the sassanid yoke and once again offered their valuable contribution to the cultural development of the empire.
But even under the Muslims there were ups and downs, and the Crusades did not contributed to the common good in the east.
So there was a swing that somehow characterized 14 centuries of coexistence during which the Church of the East organized itself and developed integrating into the life of the country of which it was and is one of the driving forces, along with other ethnic and religious components.
Click on "leggi tutto" for the whole text of the speech by Msgr. Philip Najim
As its Patriarch, Cardinal Delly, told, we are the children of martyrs, and the blood of our fathers and our grandfathers, shed for the faith, still cries to God and asks for help, and we hope that it can protect us from the evil to keep our faith that is our wealth. The name of the Chaldean church is also the Church of the East because it was born to the east of Euphrates, namely to the east of the border of the Roman Empire.
It was founded by the first apostles such as St. Thomas, his disciples Mar Addai and Mar Mari and the disciples of them who suffered martyrdom in Mesopotamia where they brought the Gospel to their brothers living in the Partian-Sassanid kingdom.
Their blood has become a seed for Christians whose number increased day by day.
Christians, for their loyalty and righteousness, had important tasks in the sassanid kingdom until when they began to be hated by the rulers who relieved them of their responsabilities and persecuted them for their faith.
During the reign of Shabor II it began a period of 40 years of persecution (339-379 AD)that made people call the Church of the East the church of martyrs. But we could also say the church of patient faithful because the problems for Christians did not end with the fall of sassanid empire.
When, in mid-seventh century, Arab Muslims fought the Persian, the Christians saw in the winners those who would free them from the sassanid yoke and once again offered their valuable contribution to the cultural development of the empire.
But even under the Muslims there were ups and downs, and the Crusades did not contributed to the common good in the east.
So there was a swing that somehow characterized 14 centuries of coexistence during which the Church of the East organized itself and developed integrating into the life of the country of which it was and is one of the driving forces, along with other ethnic and religious components.
Click on "leggi tutto" for the whole text of the speech by Msgr. Philip Najim
Everyone remembers the old Iraq as a time of splendor, as a happy island from the economic and social point of view, where no one talked about differences in religion and all lived together in harmony. Despite this, however, as the years went by, the association of thought according to which the West as Christian were bad began to creep into people’s mind, it was an automatic link strengthened also by the imposition of the embargo that made perceive the Christian as bad because accomplice of those who had imposed the sanctions. And this even if everyone suffered from it, innocent Christians and Muslims, the simple people.
When, in fact, John Paul II sent Cardinal Etchegaray to visit Iraq in his message he denounced as unfair that the simple and innocent people paid for the sins of a few. After the embargo it came the liberation that actually freed the forces hostile to peace and to the development of the country.
It was as if, in a whirlwind of violence, all the strength and anger unexpressed for many years had come to light for violently sweep away everything without distinction of any kind. Factions against factions, it was the moment of revenge and killing of those who were disliked or poorly tolerated
A great part of Islam raised against Christianity. In the early stages of the occupation we suffered from many violences, many losses, many were the churches that were exploded. The beautiful Baghdad, the city of 50 churches that are now 51, has become a battlefield, even the Green Zone is not safe, and the practice of worship remains a risk for the faithful and the priests.
The other painful page of this bitter tragedy is written with the blood of our ministers. So far no less than 16 religious were kidnapped and released only after the payment of large ransoms. These priests or others suffered from threats, beatings, extortions, and were asked to abandon their faith.
And what can be said of the sad story of Father Ragheed in Mosul? A young priest recently returned from Rome, very brave, who had been repeatedly threatened, but who had kept his church of the Holy Spirit open and for this had to be silenced. "I cannot close the house of God" used to say Father Ragheed, and so two years ago, on June 3, after leaving the church after the Mass, several men from a car riddled with bullets him and his deacons.
It was a cold blood murder occurred in front of the incredulous eyes of the people, and those who killed him, to prevent him and the deacons to be aided, and without the charity that a body from which it has just been taken off life unfairly and cruelly should deserve, surrounded the bodies with explosive. Like Christ on the cross the legs of whom were broken when he was already dead so they left Father Ragheed and his deacons. It was a chock for the whole church, for Iraq, for its friends.
After Father Ragheed the killings did not stop and recently, as you know, the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Monsignor Raho, was kidnapped and killed. The details of these barbaric killings are different and recall the persecutions of the past.
We are living in the long-awaited third millennium. We hoped in the future, in a better future and instead this is what we have: a worser situation.
Worse because for non-Christians these martyrs may mean nothing, just barbaric killings against which no-one rises, no one brings an action and pursue the murderers, but for us Christians they are yet another challenge, a grace: we have the new possibility to explain to the world why Christ died and what is the goodness of His death, what are its fruits, because if it has no fruits, as someone would like to demonstrate, then as Saint Paul said, we lost everything.
This is contrary to our faith, and that is why many Christians do not leave Iraq and not give in to threats crowding the churches and preserving the millenary spiritual tradition of the Christian east that characterizes and blesses part of that land, and that from the beginning blessed all Persia, Mesopotamia, Nineveh.
The houses were attacked, the markets were exploded, streets, stations, all that could be destroyed to support human life has been destroyed.
Still today hundreds of families that fled in search of safety from Mosul to the small towns scattered in the countryside in the north, to the monasteries and to the churches are living out of their homes.(it is said they were about 2000, only a few days ago!) It was an escalation of violence to which we were and we are used that was again unleashed against Christians whose homes, for preventing them to return, were exploded.
How could we not mention the martyrdom of the Chaldean church,or more, of the Church present in the whole Iraq. Not only the Chaldeans are suffering, but all Christians and all minorities. But Christians do not lose faith and hope and for the year dedicated to Saint Paul five churches of different rites will be visited by the faithful for the practice of indulgence and will be the scene of different activities dedicated to the Saint.
I am talking of the Chaldean church and as patriarchal procurator I must speak on behalf of my church, which is all in one with the universal church, only in its particular, and that currently is living in conditions not favourable for its stability and growth.
Not only in Iraq but also throughout the world where it is present as diaspora. As you have heard, and you know, I am the Apostolic Visitator to the diaspora in Europe, and I assure you that even outside Iraq the Chaldeans are living martyrdom, they do not shed blood, but they already arrive here stripped of their personality, and live with these scars all along, waiting to build a new life if given an opportunity.
Maybe what keeps them alive is their ethnic identity first of all and then the religious one. It is because we are Iraqis first and foremost, and all Iraqis live this martyrdom, and then we are Chaldeans, Eastern Catholics, but also non-Catholics, our Assyrian, Jacobite, Armenian brothers and other denominations who live in Iraq and share martyrdom for their faith.
But, you know, faith in the East is something visceral, an eastern Christian lives his faith differently from a western one, that’s why there is the Christian East and the Christian West, the Latin world and the Eastern one. And the martyrdom of those eastern people living in diaspora is not to have the possibility, even here in the West, in the free West, to live and practice their faith.
In Iraq, though they say there is freedom of worship, there is the danger for the churches to be exploded during the masses. In Europe, if a faithful goes to Mass on Sunday, to his divine liturgy, he does not know whether the following Sunday he will have the same opportunity because there are not enough priests for the diaspora, and they cannot satisfy everyone. The hierarchy are not always ready or prepared to meet our needs, even if it is a serious obligation for them, as our code says, while their says anything about this (Can.. CCEO 193).
For those people who left everything to get here, to participate to Qurbana, the Eucaristia, is a piece of paradise, means feeling again in their own skin, being at home, and you do not know how much strength it gives to them, how good is for them. We cannot know, everything here is within reach, everything is due, that is people who live every day trying to get what should be the minimum guaranteed to them while it is not, neither in Iraq nor in the countries of the diaspora. In any case, as we are Iraqis first and foremost and Iraqis do not bend easily, and the evidence of this is given by Father Abraham and by Moses who always went forward, all Iraqis too go ahead anyway, even if nobody avenges this country torn by a demon thirsts for blood and injustice.
The strength comes from within us, from the faith, from the pride, I don’t know, from our being Iraqis. Otherwise it seems to me that Father Ragheed, Monsignor Raho, and all the others died in vain, and I cannot believe it because whoever loses his life for Christ, really finds it again. And so we find again Father Ragheed, Monsignor Raho and all the Christian martyrs in the life of the churches in Iraq, open and full despite what is happening.
A fixed tract of the history of Christianity is going through Good Friday. But then there is Sunday, and that is our strength and our hope.
Msgr. Philip Najim
When, in fact, John Paul II sent Cardinal Etchegaray to visit Iraq in his message he denounced as unfair that the simple and innocent people paid for the sins of a few. After the embargo it came the liberation that actually freed the forces hostile to peace and to the development of the country.
It was as if, in a whirlwind of violence, all the strength and anger unexpressed for many years had come to light for violently sweep away everything without distinction of any kind. Factions against factions, it was the moment of revenge and killing of those who were disliked or poorly tolerated
A great part of Islam raised against Christianity. In the early stages of the occupation we suffered from many violences, many losses, many were the churches that were exploded. The beautiful Baghdad, the city of 50 churches that are now 51, has become a battlefield, even the Green Zone is not safe, and the practice of worship remains a risk for the faithful and the priests.
The other painful page of this bitter tragedy is written with the blood of our ministers. So far no less than 16 religious were kidnapped and released only after the payment of large ransoms. These priests or others suffered from threats, beatings, extortions, and were asked to abandon their faith.
And what can be said of the sad story of Father Ragheed in Mosul? A young priest recently returned from Rome, very brave, who had been repeatedly threatened, but who had kept his church of the Holy Spirit open and for this had to be silenced. "I cannot close the house of God" used to say Father Ragheed, and so two years ago, on June 3, after leaving the church after the Mass, several men from a car riddled with bullets him and his deacons.
It was a cold blood murder occurred in front of the incredulous eyes of the people, and those who killed him, to prevent him and the deacons to be aided, and without the charity that a body from which it has just been taken off life unfairly and cruelly should deserve, surrounded the bodies with explosive. Like Christ on the cross the legs of whom were broken when he was already dead so they left Father Ragheed and his deacons. It was a chock for the whole church, for Iraq, for its friends.
After Father Ragheed the killings did not stop and recently, as you know, the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul, Monsignor Raho, was kidnapped and killed. The details of these barbaric killings are different and recall the persecutions of the past.
We are living in the long-awaited third millennium. We hoped in the future, in a better future and instead this is what we have: a worser situation.
Worse because for non-Christians these martyrs may mean nothing, just barbaric killings against which no-one rises, no one brings an action and pursue the murderers, but for us Christians they are yet another challenge, a grace: we have the new possibility to explain to the world why Christ died and what is the goodness of His death, what are its fruits, because if it has no fruits, as someone would like to demonstrate, then as Saint Paul said, we lost everything.
This is contrary to our faith, and that is why many Christians do not leave Iraq and not give in to threats crowding the churches and preserving the millenary spiritual tradition of the Christian east that characterizes and blesses part of that land, and that from the beginning blessed all Persia, Mesopotamia, Nineveh.
The houses were attacked, the markets were exploded, streets, stations, all that could be destroyed to support human life has been destroyed.
Still today hundreds of families that fled in search of safety from Mosul to the small towns scattered in the countryside in the north, to the monasteries and to the churches are living out of their homes.(it is said they were about 2000, only a few days ago!) It was an escalation of violence to which we were and we are used that was again unleashed against Christians whose homes, for preventing them to return, were exploded.
How could we not mention the martyrdom of the Chaldean church,or more, of the Church present in the whole Iraq. Not only the Chaldeans are suffering, but all Christians and all minorities. But Christians do not lose faith and hope and for the year dedicated to Saint Paul five churches of different rites will be visited by the faithful for the practice of indulgence and will be the scene of different activities dedicated to the Saint.
I am talking of the Chaldean church and as patriarchal procurator I must speak on behalf of my church, which is all in one with the universal church, only in its particular, and that currently is living in conditions not favourable for its stability and growth.
Not only in Iraq but also throughout the world where it is present as diaspora. As you have heard, and you know, I am the Apostolic Visitator to the diaspora in Europe, and I assure you that even outside Iraq the Chaldeans are living martyrdom, they do not shed blood, but they already arrive here stripped of their personality, and live with these scars all along, waiting to build a new life if given an opportunity.
Maybe what keeps them alive is their ethnic identity first of all and then the religious one. It is because we are Iraqis first and foremost, and all Iraqis live this martyrdom, and then we are Chaldeans, Eastern Catholics, but also non-Catholics, our Assyrian, Jacobite, Armenian brothers and other denominations who live in Iraq and share martyrdom for their faith.
But, you know, faith in the East is something visceral, an eastern Christian lives his faith differently from a western one, that’s why there is the Christian East and the Christian West, the Latin world and the Eastern one. And the martyrdom of those eastern people living in diaspora is not to have the possibility, even here in the West, in the free West, to live and practice their faith.
In Iraq, though they say there is freedom of worship, there is the danger for the churches to be exploded during the masses. In Europe, if a faithful goes to Mass on Sunday, to his divine liturgy, he does not know whether the following Sunday he will have the same opportunity because there are not enough priests for the diaspora, and they cannot satisfy everyone. The hierarchy are not always ready or prepared to meet our needs, even if it is a serious obligation for them, as our code says, while their says anything about this (Can.. CCEO 193).
For those people who left everything to get here, to participate to Qurbana, the Eucaristia, is a piece of paradise, means feeling again in their own skin, being at home, and you do not know how much strength it gives to them, how good is for them. We cannot know, everything here is within reach, everything is due, that is people who live every day trying to get what should be the minimum guaranteed to them while it is not, neither in Iraq nor in the countries of the diaspora. In any case, as we are Iraqis first and foremost and Iraqis do not bend easily, and the evidence of this is given by Father Abraham and by Moses who always went forward, all Iraqis too go ahead anyway, even if nobody avenges this country torn by a demon thirsts for blood and injustice.
The strength comes from within us, from the faith, from the pride, I don’t know, from our being Iraqis. Otherwise it seems to me that Father Ragheed, Monsignor Raho, and all the others died in vain, and I cannot believe it because whoever loses his life for Christ, really finds it again. And so we find again Father Ragheed, Monsignor Raho and all the Christian martyrs in the life of the churches in Iraq, open and full despite what is happening.
A fixed tract of the history of Christianity is going through Good Friday. But then there is Sunday, and that is our strength and our hope.
Msgr. Philip Najim
