Seminarian in Nigeria burned alive in botched kidnapping 

Mosul, Iraq, Dec 19, 2019 / 03:01 am (CNA).- The Great Al-Tahira Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Bakhdida remains charred black inside, five years after the Islamic State plundered and set it aflame; however, in 2020 the Syriac Catholic cathedral will be restored as Iraq’s largest Christian community fights to rebuild and regain what was lost.

“It is a very significant church because it was built from the donations of local people, agriculture workers,” Fr. Georges Jahola, a parish priest from Bakhdida, told CNA.

Bakhdida, also known as Qaraqosh, is located 20 miles southeast of Mosul. Fr Jahola said that the local Christians hope that in the future their town will be referred to as as Bakhdida, the Aramaic and more historic name of their town, rather than Qaraqosh, a Turkish name that came from the Ottoman Empire.

The cathedral in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains was constructed from 1932-1948 as Catholic farmers donated each year from their harvest, the priest explained. The Great Al-Tahira served a growing Christian community, until the Islamic State turned the cathedral into an indoor shooting range from 2014-2016.

After Bakhdida’s liberation from the Islamic State in 2016, Masses resumed in the damaged cathedral as Christians returned to rebuild their community. Aid to the Church in Need committed to completely restore the cathedral’s fire-damaged interior in late 2019.

Christianity has been present in the Nineveh plain in Iraq – between Mosul and Iraqi Kurdistan – since the first century.

Rebuilding the 6,936 damaged homes in Bakhdida began in earnest in May 2017, and since then more than half have been completed, Fr. Jahola said.

The latest rebuilding statistics for Bakhdida divide the rebuilt homes into three categories: completed destroyed, partially destroyed, and partially damaged.

Of the 2,100 homes that were burnt and partially destroyed in Bakhdida, 818 homes have been rebuilt and 1,282 remain in need of repair. Thirty-two of the homes that were completely destroyed have been totally rebuilt, while 30 such houses remain. A little over half of the 4,774 homes that were partially damaged by the Islamic State in the city have been repaired.

“With the help of many NGOs we were able to rebuild many houses,” he said, noting the contributions of Aid to the Church in Need, Samaritan’s Purse, the Salt Foundation, SOS Chrétiens d’Orient, Malteser International, Fraternity in Iraq, and others to Bakhdida.

The Hungarian government office for Aid of Persecuted Christians announced in October a partnership with U.S. Agency for International Development to contribute to the rebuilding of homes in Bakhdida and Sinjar in northern Iraq.

“It is indeed the cradle of Christianity,” Tristan Azbej, Hungarian State Secretary for the Aid of Persecuted Christians told CNA.

“What we have partnered for is that Hungary would provide donations of local Syriac rite Orthodox Church to reconstruct close to 100 local homes and USAID will provide donations and provision of reconstruction of the market center for the local businesses of the town Qaraqosh Baghdeda,” he said.

Fr. Jahola told CNA that Bakhdida needs news jobs. “Young people have no work, so some of them go to Erbil or leave Iraq,” he said. “It isn’t easy. Also because Iraq now is in an unstable political situation.”

At least 400 people have died since anti-government protests began across Iraq in October.

Among the Syriac Catholic, Syriac Orthodox, Chaldean, Armenian, Assyrian, and Muslim commities in Bakhdida, there was one reconstruction committee that has worked together to manage rebuilding, Jahola said.

The Al-Tahira Cathedral was one of four churches in Bakhdida to be desecrated and burnt by the Islamic State: two Syriac Catholic churches and two Syriac Orthodox.

Fr. Jahola is the parish priest of the Syriac Catholic Church of Mar Behnam and Mart Sarah, a desecrated church that was renovated and rededicated on the feast of the Assumption of Mary this year.

“I think it is very important to support this town because it is the biggest symbol of Christianity in Iraq. Until now, we kept it as a Christian city, but we do not know what the future will bring for us,” he said.

An estimated 225,000 Christians remain in Iraq, according to In Defence of Christians.

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Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra inaugurated an apostolic nunciature in Abu Dhabi, UAE on Feb. 4, 2022. / Photos courtesy of the Apostolic Vicariate of Southern Arabia.

Rome Newsroom, Feb 4, 2022 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
The Vatican opened its first embass… […]

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Feb 4, 2019 / 10:35 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In an interreligious meeting in Abu Dhabi Monday, Pope Francis said that for peace to flourish among religions, there must be justice, and respect for human dignity and freedom.

“Justice is the second wing of peace. No one, therefore, can believe in God and not seek to live in justice with everyone, according to the Golden Rule,” the pope said Feb. 4. “So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.”

“Peace and justice are inseparable!”

Speaking at Abu Dhabi’s “Founder’s Monument,” which commemorates the founder and first president of the United Arab Emirates, Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the pope emphasized that is the task of religions to promote human dignity, particularly for the least and the poor.

Religions “should keep watch as sentinels of fraternity in the night of conflict. They should be vigilant warnings to humanity not to close our eyes in the face of injustice and never to resign ourselves to the many tragedies in the world,” he said.

This “human fraternity” also comes with the duty of rejecting and condemning war, he stated, noting its “miserable crudeness” and “fateful consequences.”

“I am thinking in particular of Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Libya,” he said. “Together, as brothers and sisters in the one human family willed by God, let us commit ourselves against the logic of armed power … let us oppose all this with the sweet power of prayer and daily commitment to dialogue.”

Pope Francis, the first pope to visit the Arabian peninsula, is in Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, Feb. 3-5 to promote interreligious dialogue and give support to the country’s Christian minority.

Before the interreligious meeting, he met for around 30 minutes with the Muslim Council of Elders. He then visited the city’s Grand Mosque with the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayeb, before paying his respects at Zayed’s tomb.

At the interreligious meeting, the pope praised last November’s meeting, the first, of the Forum of the Interreligious Alliance for Safer Communities, which was on the theme of child dignity in the digital world.

“I thank, therefore, all the leaders who are engaged in this field,” he said, “and I assure them of my support, solidarity and participation and that of the Catholic Church, in this very important cause of the protection of minors in all its forms.”

Reflecting on interreligious dialogue, he said the point of departure is recognizing God as the origin of “one human family,” that “He who is the Creator of all things and of all persons wants us to live as brothers and sisters, dwelling in the common home of creation which he has given us.”

Francis pointed out that to honor the creator requires valuing the sacredness of each human life, “equally precious in the eyes of God.”

“Thus, to recognize the same rights for every human being is to glorify the name of God on earth. In the name of God the Creator, therefore, every form of violence must be condemned without hesitation, because we gravely profane God’s name when we use it to justify hatred and violence against a brother or sister,” he said.

An important part of effective dialogue and human fraternity is prayer, he said. It “purifies the heart from turning in on itself. Prayer of the heart restores fraternity.”

Quoting The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, he said: “May our prayer – each one according to his or her own tradition – adhere fully to the will of God, who wants all men and women to recognize they are brothers and sisters and live as such, forming the great human family in the harmony of diversity.”

“There is no alternative: we will either build the future together or there will not be a future,” he continued. “The time has come when religions should more actively exert themselves, with courage and audacity, and without pretense, to help the human family deepen the capacity for reconciliation, the vision of hope and the concrete paths of peace.”

During the meeting, Pope Francis and Tayeb signed a joint declaration “on human fraternity for world peace and living together,” asking that the document “become the object of research and reflection in all schools, universities and institutes of formation.”

The four-and-a-half-page declaration condemned issues such as the taking of innocent human life, terrorism, world hunger, materialism, and a lack of equitable distribution of natural resources.

It also stated that the family is “the fundamental nucleus of society and humanity,” and noted that to attack, to regard with contempt, or to doubt the importance of the institution of the family “is one of the most threatening evils of our era.”

“In conclusion, our aspiration is that … this Declaration may be a sign of the closeness between East and West, between North and South, and between all who believe that God has created us to understand one another, cooperate with one another and live as brothers and sisters who love one another,” it stated.

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