By Baghdadhope
On Sunday, March 8, the light of candles will filter through the windows of the poor and the rich, of those who have been living in Sweden for a long time and of the recentlyarrived, of those who goes to church regularly and of those who go only on Christmas and Easter.
Different homes, different lives, but with one thing in common: in each of them lives an Iraqi family. And all of them answered the call of Father Paul Rabban, the Iraqi Chaldean priest of Eskilstuna who asked to light a candle in memory of Archbishop Faraj P. Raho, the bishop of Mosul abducted and killed last year, but also of all the other martyrs, and to pray for peace in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
"Already last Sunday we launched the appeal during the Sunday Mass in Västerås, a town in central Sweden," said Father Paul Rabban to Baghdadhope "and on Sunday 8 we will renew itin Eskilstuna and Stockholm"
"The Light and the Fire of Truth and Love of Christ will not be extinguished by the death of martyrs, but on the contrary, they will shine in the whole world through the faithful."
On Sunday, March 8, the light of candles will filter through the windows of the poor and the rich, of those who have been living in Sweden for a long time and of the recentlyarrived, of those who goes to church regularly and of those who go only on Christmas and Easter.
Different homes, different lives, but with one thing in common: in each of them lives an Iraqi family. And all of them answered the call of Father Paul Rabban, the Iraqi Chaldean priest of Eskilstuna who asked to light a candle in memory of Archbishop Faraj P. Raho, the bishop of Mosul abducted and killed last year, but also of all the other martyrs, and to pray for peace in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
"Already last Sunday we launched the appeal during the Sunday Mass in Västerås, a town in central Sweden," said Father Paul Rabban to Baghdadhope "and on Sunday 8 we will renew itin Eskilstuna and Stockholm"
"The Light and the Fire of Truth and Love of Christ will not be extinguished by the death of martyrs, but on the contrary, they will shine in the whole world through the faithful."
With these words Father Paul Rabban described the spiritual meaning of the event that in Sweden marks a period of intense emotion linked to the memory of the martyrs of Iraq and in the world is being translated into commemoration ceremonies.
Martyrs who, as Father Rabban said, were remembered on Sunday, March 1, in the Catholic Cathedral of Saint Eric in Stockholm by Msgr. Anders Arborelius, the Bishop of Sweden, recently returned from a trip in northern Iraq where, together with the Syriac Catholic priest living in Stockholm, Father Adris Hanna, and the vicar for the oriental churches in Sweden, Father Matthias Grahm, was able to visit many villages and cities and where, as the same Bishop Arborelius said, he experienced moments of deep emotion meeting the family of Father Ragheed Ganni, the Chaldean priest killed in Mosul in June 2007, and in celebrating the Holy Mass in the church in Karamles where are buried Father Ragheed and still for a few days the same Archbishop Raho whose body will be moved on March 13 in St. Paul church in Mosul as he left written in his last will.
