Iraq: Christians No Longer Want to Return to Mosul
During mass at Saint John of Qaraqosh church, Irak.
Iraqi forces are on their way to reclaiming the city of Mosul, in northern Iraq. Occupied by the Islamic State (IS) since October 2014, the second largest city of Iraq (1.5 million inhabitants) was once the home of the country’s largest Christian community.
But with the daily barbarous treatment they were undergoing, this community fled en masse, leaving all its belongings in the hands of the Muslims.
This situation led Fr. Emmanuel, pastor of a refugee camp in Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, to say that “for us Christians, Mosul is over. We will not be returning.” Despite their centuries-old presence, Christians no longer “belong there” and liberating it “is not much good anymore”. When questioned by a special envoy from the press agency cath.ch to Iraq on May 11, 2017, Fr. Emmanuel lamented that “something was irreparably broken between us and our Muslim compatriots....We want to stay in the country. But if the Muslim majority no longer wants us, what can we do? Muslims do not know the love of neighbor, especially if it is of another religion. It is very unlikely that they will accept to give back the property they have stolen from the Christians.”
The priest left Mosul in haste with 500 families of his parish on June 10, 2014, as the jihadists advanced. Today, he lives with 1,500 Christian families, about 5,000 people, in a camp built in the middle of a vast and vague terrain. As the correspondent for cath.ch reports, these families, who were once “land owners, merchants, or businessmen,” no longer have anything. And “without any plan, without any organization, they cannot even think of returning home, even if the Daesh terrorists are defeated”. The ecclesiastical authorities try to encourage their return, but without guarantees, “no one wants to risk it”.
Sources: cath.ch/afp / FSSPX.News - 5/26/17
