By Christian PostSamuel Smith
The World’s largest Catholic fraternal service organization, Knights
of Columbus, will give $1 million-worth of food supplies to an Iraqi
archdiocese to ensure that thousands of Christians displaced from their
homes by the Islamic State are able to enjoy the Christmas season a
little bit better this year.
At a press briefing with reporters Tuesday morning, Knights of
Columbus CEO Carl Anderson announced that his Connecticut-based
organization is donating up to $1 million in food that will benefit over
15,000 Iraqi families that were forced out of their homes and villages
in the Nineveh Plains when IS (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh) took
over in 2014.
“Knights of Columbus will be providing $1 million in food supplements
this Christmas to the Archdiocese of Erbil to help these 15,000
families enjoy Christmas a little better,” Anderson said, adding that
the donation is not meant to be a material gift but rather an
“expression of our solidarity.”
The donation comes as the Knights of Columbus, which has been one of
the most active U.S.-based organizations in supporting displaced
Christians in the region, has raised over $17 million in the last three
years to help Christians displaced by the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria.
Earlier this year, the organization followed in the footsteps of the
Hungarian government by donating $2 million to the Chaldean Archdiocese
of Erbil to help rebuild a once predominantly Christian town decimated
by the jihadi death cult.
The press briefing was held at the National Press Club in accordance
with the U.S. Catholic Church’s declaration of a weeklong observance to
raise awareness for the situation facing Iraqi and Syrian Christians who
were targeted for genocide by IS.
The Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil, Bashar Warda, who runs the
archdiocese directly responsible for helping clothe, feed, shelter and
council the thousands of Iraqi Christians who sought refuge in the
Kurdish north, also spoke at the press briefing.
Warda stressed that with the Christmas season fast approaching, the
displaced Christians are reminded that despite their situation, God has
not let them down.
“Christmas is really very special, a celebration for the Christians
of Iraq, especially when we meditate on the Holy Family, who was also
displaced on the roads to Bethlehem, to Egypt. So this is a very
spiritual and powerful message to always meditate on,” Warda said. “We
know that despite all of these difficulties that [Christian families
have faced], we do believe that the providences of God have not let us
down. We have discovered the hands of mercy via the [charity] that has
been shown to us over the last three years and a half. It’s made us live
with difficulties but with dignity.”
Although the archdiocese has received millions of dollars in
donations from groups like Knights of Columbus and Aid to the Church in
Need, Warda said that the Iraqi government’s recently imposed ban on
international flights to Kurdish airports in response to a Kurdish
independence vote earlier this fall has made it much harder for
international humanitarian aid to get to displaced Christians and other
religious minorities in Iraq.
“Before the referendum, our liberated villages were under the
attention of aid agencies that used to travel to Erbil and go to see
these villages and evaluate the situations themselves and provide help,”
Warda explained. “Closing the airports has affected very much the help.
Now, we have no one coming to these villages. We are afraid that this
will affect the level of help. That is why we have requested from the
government of Baghdad to provide more help and more assistance to those
who would like to visit and provide help.”
“We as a church … we were never asked to centralize all the help,” Warda added. “We were there to help others helping us.”
Warda also praised President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike
Pence, who announced earlier this month that the United States
government will aim to provide direct humanitarian and reconstruction
assistance directly to organizations on the ground that are helping the
displaced religious minority communities in Iraq without having to rely
on the United Nations.
A long-running complaint from Iraqi Christian leaders and advocates
has been that the billions of dollars in humanitarian aid spent by the
U.S. government in Iraq was not reaching the Archdiocese of Erbil and
other groups that are aiding the religious minorities who didn’t seek
shelter in U.N. camps because of fear of persecution.
Additionally, the U.N. has been accused of overstating the amount of
support it has provided in helping Christian communities rebuild their
hometowns.
“I am grateful to the Trump administration. Vice President Pence’s
remarks last month about helping the communities targeted for genocide
was incredibly [heart-warming] for the Christians and Yazidis in Iraq,”
Warda said. “It marks an important shift because it shows that the
American government considers the situation of those who suffer this
persecution at the hands of ISIS to be a priority.”
“Of course, we hope that the aid will move swiftly to help our people
who previously have felt they were forgotten,” he continued. “We are
also ready and committed to working with the United States government as
we have previously the Hungarian government to help ensure that the aid
they provide is put to the most effective use possible to save our
communities, the communities who we have cared for since 2014.”
Stephen Rasche, the general counsel for the Archdiocese of Erbil and
the president of the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee, which represents
the rebuilding interests of the Chaldean and Syriac churches, also
praised the Trump administration for intervening to prevent an armed
conflict from occurring between Kurdish and Iraqi forces in the once
predominantly Christian town of Telskuf at the end of October.
Telskuf was in part rebuilt by a $2 million donation from the
Hungarian government to the archdiocese and was seen as somewhat of a
model for the return of Christians to their hometowns in Nineveh. But
when conflict between the Kurds and Baghdad looked imminent late last
month, hundreds of Christian families who had resettled in the town were
forced to flee again.
Thanks to the intervention from the U.S. government, a battle never
occurred in the town and most of the Christians were able to return the
next day. A source told The Christian Post last month that the
destruction of Telskuf could have been “the beginning of the end of
Christianity in Iraq” because there are “so few towns left that every
one of them is precious.”
“I want to thank all the angels that are working on the land,” Fr.
Salar Kajo, the parish priest of Telskuf who was one of the few people
who stayed behind in the town when the conflict erupted between the
Kurds and Baghdad last month, said. “We ask to keep maintaining the
peace there and to help us return to our villages and have a normal life
as we had before ISIS.”
As part of the week of awareness, Rasche, a U.S. citizen, explained
that he and the Iraqi Christian leaders were also in Washington this
week to meet with government officials.
“We are tremendously encouraged by the language that has come from
the administration but we caution everybody to remember that the hour is
well past midnight for the Christians to be returning in Nineveh,” He
asserted. “So the time for action is now and we are hopeful that will
happen.”