Aid to the Church in Need: Crisis deepens for Christians in Iraq

Crisis deepens for Christians in Iraq

Posted by Press Release on 5/6/2008, 11:28 am
Message modified by board administrator 7/8/2008, 1:29 pm

ACN News: Thursday, 5th June 2008 – IRAQ

Crisis deepens for Christians in Iraq

Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), the charity for Christians persecuted for their faith, has received worsening reports of Christians kidnapped and tortured, evicted from their homes and forced to pay fines. Christian women have reportedly been forced to marry extremist militia.

Christians have been virtually wiped out of parts of Iraq and it is now thought that they have plummeted from more than a million to barely 400,000 within just a few years.

Up to 100,000 Christian refugees have fled to Syria and a similar number to Jordan with thousands more to Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey.

The biggest setback came late in February with the kidnapping of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, in north-west Mosul. Two weeks later, his body was discovered in a shallow grave.

This followed the murder last June of a young Iraqi priest, Ragheed Gani, and three deacons who were mown down in a street after Mass by a hail of bullets.

Funeral procession for 3 deacons killed in an attack in Mosul in June 2007.

John Pontifex, a press officer for the charity, said: “At ACN, we have watched with increasing alarm the crisis which has struck Christianity in the heart in Iraq, threatening wipe-out in a generation or sooner.”

Aid to the Church in Need is providing emergency help for Iraqi Christian refugees and is giving support for priests ministering in some of the poorest and most persecuted regions.

Archbishop Louis Sako, of Kirkuk, Iraq recently told an ACN conference in Switzerland: “The Christians of the West must come to a realisation of the gravity of the tragedy of the Iraqi Christians.

“They are the most ancient inhabitants of the country, and a significant part of its culture. But they are often the victims of violence that strikes them in that they are Christians.
“Iraqi Christians feel alone, isolated, and forgotten. They have no confidence in a secure future in the face of the great silence of the international community and of the Church itself, except for the pope and some European bishops.”

St George’s Assyrian Church, Doura, Baghdad, which was damaged after it was fire bombed.

Editor's notes

Directly under the Holy See, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need. ACN is a Catholic charity – helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Fr Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity”, the organisation is now at work in about 145 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 45 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information, please contact the Sydney office of ACN on (02) 9679-1929. e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org or write to Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148. Web:www.aidtochurch.org

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Aid to the Church in Need PO Box 6245 Blacktown DC NSW 2148 ABN: 62 418 911 594
Ph/Fax (02) 9679-1929 e-mail: info@aidtochurch.org web: www.aidtochurch.org