The
following excerpts are from AINA.org:
The
violence in Iraq is hastening the end of nearly 2,000 years of
Christianity there as the few remaining faithful flee Islamic State
militants, archbishops from Baghdad, Mosul and Kirkuk said on
Wednesday.
War
and sectarian conflict have shrunk Iraq's Christian population to
about 400,000 from 1.5 million before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,
and now even those who stayed are leaving for Turkey, Lebanon and
western Europe, the prelates said on a visit to Brussels seeking
European Union help to protect their flocks.
The
three - Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, Syrian
Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Yohanna Petros Mouche and Kirkuk's
Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Youssif Mirkis - are all Eastern
Catholics whose churches have their own traditional liturgy but are
loyal to the pope in Rome.
"The
next days will be very bad. If the situation does not change,
Christians will be left with just a symbolic presence in Iraq,"
said Sako, who is based in Baghdad. "If they leave, their
history is finished."
Read
more by clicking below:
Iraqi Christians Flee Violence, Fear End of Long History
