“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.