“This is a community now under dire threat of extinction,” the Primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Seán Brady warned, as he welcomed the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Erbil in Iraq to Dundalk, Co Louth.Referring to the estimated 1.6 million Iraqi refugees now living outside Iraq, Cardinal Brady said some 640,000 of these are thought to be Christian.
“The evidence is clear and persuasive, Christianity is being aggressively uprooted from the Middle-East, the very lands from which it first sprang,” the Cardinal stated.
In his response to an address by Archbishop Bashar Warda, the Cardinal said, “The overt and aggressive private and public anti-Christian sentiment so evident in Iraq” is not limited to Iraq but is found throughout the Middle East, as well as in Asia, Africa and “increasingly it is being found within the once-Christian lands of Western Europe.”
Noting that Archbishop Warda had studied for a period of time in Dundalk with his Redemptorist confreres, Cardinal Brady referred to another Iraqi cleric who also had had links with Ireland - Fr Ragheed Ganni - a former student of the Irish College in Rome and who was assassinated by militant Muslims as he left Sunday Mass in Mosul, Northern Iraq on June 3 2007.
The Cardinal, who was formerly rector of the Irish College in Rome, recalled that before killing Fr Ganni, one of his attackers was overheard to scream, “I told you to close the Church. Why didn’t you do it? Why are you still here?”
“By simply professing their Faith in public, Iraqi Christians are being persecuted physically, socially and economically, their lives and livelihoods are under continuous threat”, Cardinal Brady said.
Following his address at the Armagh Diocesan Pastoral Centre in Dundalk on Wednesday, Archbishop Warda told ciNews, “The past is terrifying, the present is not promising, so everything is telling us that there is no future for Christians.”
Describing the current situation in the Middle East as “boiling,” he said Christians in the region “expect another war” on account of the instability in so many countries and the ongoing tensions between Shiites and Sunnis.
Speaking on the plight of Christians in Iraq and the wider Middle East, Archbishop Warda warned that the persecution of Christians is not restricted to Iraq alone, but is apparent in countries like the Holy Land and Lebanon.
Referring to the findings of a new report by Aid to the Church in Need, ‘Persecuted and Forgotten?’ the Archbishop of Erbil said, “In many countries the situation for Christians seems to be worsening, sometimes to the point that we wonder if we will survive as a community.”
He added, the place of Christians as one of the original inhabitants of the region has been “wiped from collective memory.”
Discussing the exodus of Christians from Iraq, he noted that during the first Gulf War, the Christian population in Iraq was estimated to be between 1.2 and 1.4 million.
By 2003, it had dropped by over half a million. Iraq’s Christian population now numbers less than 500,000 he said and added that this figure is highly optimistic.
The 41-year-old Chaldean Catholic Archbishop said that since the occupation of Iraq began in 2003, over 500 Christians had been killed in religious and politically motivated violence.
Between 2006 and 2010, 17 Iraqi priests and two Iraqi bishops had been kidnapped in Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk. All were beaten or tortured by their kidnappers. Most were released, but one bishop, four priests and three sub-deacons were killed.
“In most cases, those responsible for the crimes stated they wanted Christians out of Iraq,” the Redemptorist prelate said.
Referring to the “systematic bombing campaign of Iraqi churches,” he cited figures showing that a total of 66 churches have been attacked or bombed; 41 in Baghdad, 19 in Mosul, five in Kirkuk and one in Ramadi. In addition, two convents, one monastery and a church orphanage were also bombed.
“The Middle East is a crescent founded on a cultural and social environment which depends on violence to keep its societies divided,” Archbishop Warda explained.
Though the finger of blame for this situation was often pointed towards the Crusades, the aggressive West, Israel and American Christians, “in reality the enemy is within,” he said.
The leader of the Church in Erbil is critical of Iraq’s “weak constitution which tries to please two masters.”
He added, “We are living in a region which cannot decide if it is for democracy or Islamic law.”
He added, “It cannot decide if it is for the rights of human beings to live in freedom in all its exciting and challenging forms, or if it is for the control of the spirit and the minds of its people.”
He warned, “This is the kind of control that welcomes the terrorist methods of intimidation, kidnapping and killing of religious minorities."
The Archbishop hit out at “neighbouring governments feeding insurgents with money and weapons to destabilise the Iraqi government” and regretted that the rest of world’s governments had “turned their backs on us, as if the human rights abuses and near genocide conditions of Iraqi Christians experience are temporary.”
He claimed that the threat to Iraq’s Christians isn’t something new but had been an ongoing problem for fifty years.
Calling for more strategic and sustainable solutions he challenged the US and UK governments to implement an “ethical foreign policy” in relation to Iraq and other Middle Eastern regimes.
“They could help by making respect for the human rights of all citizens necessary for financial and political support, starting with Iraq’s constitution,” he told ciNews.
The Archbishop explained that due to the “systematic intimidation and violence” that preceded the 2010 elections, and in the wake of the bombing of the church in Baghdad in October, 4,000 Christian families had fled Iraqi cities with Christian populations for Erbil.
The Diocese has, as a result, grown by over 30 per cent with churches, schools, health care facilities, housing and basic infrastructures feeling the burden.
Diocesan leaders are seeking, through donor organisations such as Aid to the Church in Need, to provide stability for the local population via employment and affordable housing and to ensure that Christians had access to good education and medical care.
“We want the presence of the Christian Church to be apparent by a vibrant and active parish life symbolised by physical church buildings and obvious public spaces. We do not want to hide our faith or identity out of fear for our lives. We want to be seen and remembered by all Iraqis; those who threaten us, but moreover those willing to stand in solidarity with us,” he told ciNews.
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