Darkness and Shadows for the Christians in Iraq

In 2003, Iraq had 1.5 million Christians; in 2019, only 400,000 to 500,000, a third are left in the land of their fathers.

The leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church recalled the difficulties encountered during the three long years during which spiritual and material aid had to be brought to the populations that had fled Mosul and the Nineveh Plains when the ISIS jihadists invaded the region. 

Cardinal Sako also mentioned the ongoing campaigns of hateful propaganda against the Christians of Bagdad and other cities in the country. He berated the action of “some Christian politicians who serve their personal interests by overriding the will of the Christian component”, an allusion to the thorny issue of Iraqi Kurdistan, where the Christian minority is being increasingly used as a political instrument. 

For Cardinal Sako, the opposition met with by the patriarchate comes from those who

...cannot tolerate seeing the ‘revival’ of the Chaldean Church and its brilliant role (…) in spite of all the challenges that have been faced over the last six years.