In his Christmas message, Patriarch Louis I Raphael Sako thanked the
Iraqi and Kurdish armies, as well as Christian fighters, for “liberating
the Iraqi lands occupied by the ISIS terrorists.”
The patriarch, who leads the Chaldean Catholic Church—an Eastern
Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See—also thanked the
regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan for assisting persecuted
Christians and called upon Iraqi Christians to remain in their native
land.
The front line in the battle against the Islamic State is now eight
miles from Mosul, and some recently liberated Christian towns were able
to celebrate their first Christmas since 2013.
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