Crucifixes damaged by jihadi fighters on the Nineveh Plains of Iraq have been put on display at Westminster Cathedral.
The three crucifixes come from Chaldean and Syriac Catholic churches attacked by Daesh (Islamic State) in 2014 on the Nineveh plains.
Dr John Newton, communications and research manager for the charity Aid to the Church in Need, said: “One of the damaged items comes from Teleskuf, where Daesh devastated St George’s Chaldean Church – and yet by the end of 2017, Daesh had been driven out, St George’s had been repaired and Christians had started returning to the town.”
Newton helped source the Iraq crucifixes displayed in Westminster Cathedral’s It’s Iconic exhibition from churches in the Christian settlements of Qaraqosh and Telskuf, on the Nineveh Plains. Both were attacked in August 2014.
Newton said: “It was exactly a decade ago that Daesh started its genocidal campaign of conquest in northern Iraq, attempting to eradicate Christians, Yazidis and others from their ancient homelands.”
“The extremists desecrated the churches and their contents – for example mannequins were taken from local shops and set up to form a shooting range in the Great Al-Tahira Church.”
He continued: “The Christians who fled these towns and lived as refugees in their own countries walked the path of Christ’s passion. Even though these crucifixes have been damaged so that, in some cases, the corpus has been destroyed, paradoxically they have the power to make Christ’s suffering even more real to us.”
Newton said Qaraqosh and Telskuf were “testaments to how the faith has endured”.
“In January 2017 Telskuf was the first village that displaced families started returning to,” he said. “By May 2017 around 700 Christians had gone back to their homes. And Qaraqosh – which before it fell was the largest Christian-majority town in northern Iraq – has, with ACN’s help, seen around half of the 11,111 Christians families that used to live there return.”
Lucien de Guise, the curator of the exhibition said the remnants of Iraqi crosses were “especially welcome as they convey the power of the crucifix in a different way due to their degraded condition”.
He added: “Christ’s suffering for humanity becomes even more apparent when his body is reduced to just an arm or a pair of feet. What’s concealed really can be more expressive than what’s revealed.
“These loans from ACN are also a reminder of how that suffering has continued among the people who were among the earliest to follow the message of Christianity.”
He added: “They are crushingly poignant. It’s also rare to have access to works from places where they are still filled with meaning.”
De Guise observed: “All three crucifixes are among the most heartbreaking testimony to the importance of this imagery. The damage they have sustained is a reminder of oppression that has been a constant factor in the history of Christianity. At every point there has been persecution and iconoclasm somewhere in the world.
“What happened in Iraq 10 years ago is a continuation of the Protestant Reformation, the French Revolution and countless unrecorded conflicts. We forget so easily, but the evidence of these crucifixes is a constant reminder.
“ACN has done a service to mankind by preserving what could easily have been thrown into the dustbin of intolerance.”