By Fox News
Caleb Parke
The Trump Administration has committed more than $340 million to help Christians affected by the ISIS genocide in the Middle East. Now, different areas are starting to see churches and cemeteries restored after the terror group specifically sought their demolition.
Caleb Parke
The Trump Administration has committed more than $340 million to help Christians affected by the ISIS genocide in the Middle East. Now, different areas are starting to see churches and cemeteries restored after the terror group specifically sought their demolition.
Vice
President Pence announced the Genocide Recovery and Persecution Response
Program last year, partnering with non-profit groups, to help rebuild
the communities that were targeted by ISIS.
"We’re continuing to work with a strong range of nongovernmental organizations — NGOs, as they are known — including the great ministry of the Knights of Columbus," Pence said last week in an address at Ave Maria University. "We’re going to rebuild these communities. We’re going to work with our partners across the Nineveh Plain, Iraq, the Kurdish region of Iraq. And we’re going to see these communities come home."Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, whose congressional testimony was a key component in drafting "The Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act," which passed unanimously and was signed into law by President Trump in 2018, recently visited Iraq at the invitation of Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil as part of the partnership to provide aid for reconstructing a Catholic church and restoring Christian cemeteries in Nineveh.
"We’re continuing to work with a strong range of nongovernmental organizations — NGOs, as they are known — including the great ministry of the Knights of Columbus," Pence said last week in an address at Ave Maria University. "We’re going to rebuild these communities. We’re going to work with our partners across the Nineveh Plain, Iraq, the Kurdish region of Iraq. And we’re going to see these communities come home."Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, whose congressional testimony was a key component in drafting "The Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act," which passed unanimously and was signed into law by President Trump in 2018, recently visited Iraq at the invitation of Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil as part of the partnership to provide aid for reconstructing a Catholic church and restoring Christian cemeteries in Nineveh.
The Knights will also help with the reconstruction of the town of
Karamles, restoring property rights, building Step-In clinics in Erbil
and Dohuk for displaced Yazidis, creating aid for Syrian refugees in
Lebanon and Syria, and establishing a human rights and religious freedom
observatory at the Catholic University in Erbil, to help create an
alert system to prevent future genocides.
“Those we met with made
clear that Knights of Columbus support has been decisive in helping
these communities survive,” said Anderson, who met with senior Church
leaders and U.S. and Kurdish government officials. “More help is on the
way, as we remain committed to ensuring that ISIS and its ideology do
not eliminate Christians and religious minorities from this region.”The Knights said they will provide an additional $3 million in direct
funding for humanitarian programs in Iraq, with an additional $2.5
million in co-funding will be supplied by government partners for a
total of $5.5 million. The Knight of Columbus has donated more than $20
million since 2014 on behalf of persecuted Christians and other
religious minorities in the Middle East.
The support has funded rebuilding – and saving – the town of Karamles, after its liberation from ISIS; feeding tens thousands of displaced people; providing short-term and long-term housing for the displaced; supporting educational and medical programs for those targeted by ISIS, etc.
The support has funded rebuilding – and saving – the town of Karamles, after its liberation from ISIS; feeding tens thousands of displaced people; providing short-term and long-term housing for the displaced; supporting educational and medical programs for those targeted by ISIS, etc.