An Iraqi Catholic priest Ragheed Ganni, gunned down in Mosul after saying mass on Sunday, is remembered at the Irish College in Rome, where he trained for the priesthood "as an exceptionally outgoing person, the sort of person that if you meet once you remember.""Even when he had just arrived and couldn't speak English or Italian he still managed to communicate with people here at the college" the rector Liam Bergin told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone interview.
Rasheed Ganni, 35, was shot dead along with three deacons in their car, shortly after he had said mass on Sunday.
Phone calls and emails of condolence have been flooding in from those who knew the 35 year old priest.
“This tragic violence has created ripples far afield. Even the Irish president who was in Rome at Sunday's canonisation had met Ragheed in Ireland and remembered him” Bergin told AKI.
During his seminary studies Ganni couldn't return to Iraq during the holidays so he often spent that time in Ireland. For that connection but also for his extrovert nature he was nicknamed “Paddy the Iraqi”.
He had recently been given permission by his bishop to come to Rome to study for a doctorate in ecumenism.
“I spoke to him a week ago” said Bergin, noting that the young Chaldean priest was conscious of the dangers he faced in Iraq, the risks that non-Muslims could be “seen as friends or collaborators of the invading forces” but he also felt that “as a priest he would be less likely to suffer than the faithful.”
An engineer by trade, his studies were sponsored by the Irish church and after his ordination, in Rome's St Mary of the Angels basilica in October 2001, he celebrated his first ever Mass in the College chapel.
In a telegram on Monday to the Chaldean Bishop of Mosul, the Vatican said that Pope Benedict XVI was "deeply saddened to learn of the senseless killing of Ragheed Aziz Ganni, and subdeacons Basman Yousef Daoud, Ghasan Bidawid and Wadid Hanna."
"He [the Pope] prays that their costly sacrifice will inspire in the hearts of all men and women of good will a renewed resolve to reject the ways of hatred and violence" the statement continued.
Mosul with a population of around three million is home to ethnic Kurds, Shiites and Sunni Arabs, as well as some Turkmen and Christians.
According to a recent UN report of the 1.5 million Assyrian-Chaldean Christians living in Iraq before 2003, half had fled the country and many of the others were moving internally in the search for safety.
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