By BaghdadhopeIt seems impossible even to "think" to normality speaking of Baghdad. A city that in recent days, with the pulling out of the U.S. troops from Iraqi cities, sank back into the chaos of the attacks. Yet "normal" was defined the course of study of the Institute of Religious Sciences that prepares, in a three-year period, the future catechists. A school year carried out properly and that ended with the handing of the diplomas to new catechists 5 - three women and two men.
Present at the ceremony, held on June 23, were Msgr. Jacques Isaac, rector of the Babel College, to which the Institute is affiliated, who in the introductory speech stressed the role of the Institut in the intellectual preparation of Christians and revealed the intention to open a branch in Ankawa, in northern Iraq, the town where for security reasons the Babel College was transferred from Baghdad in January 2007, and where thousands of Christians are living among the indigenous ones and those who fled there to escape from the violence in other parts of the country. There was the Apostolic Nuncio in Jordan and Iraq, Msgr. Francis A. Chullikat, Msgr. Andraous Abouna, auxiliary Chaldean bishop of Baghdad, Father Salem Saka, vice rector of the Babel College, Father Sa'ad Sirop Hanna, director of the Institute of Religious Science, Abdallah Al Naufali, head of the government office for non-Muslims and many priests, relatives and friends of the new graduates. A regular school year therefore. Regular the ceremony too that, as if to mark maybe not a true but certainly a desired normality, and even through normal security procedures that even today in Baghdad are a necessity, was not held in a church or in a place connected to it but at the "Pine Palace" in Baghdad, a hall for receptions.
It will take time but Baghdad will rise again, and with it the Iraqis too.
