The plight of Catholics in Iraq is now appearing in the news agenda, though not on most mainstream media. According to the Catholic news agency Zenit, last week a delegation of Iraqi bishops was at the European Parliament.
“We want Europe and the West to put pressure on the Iraqi government to guarantee the rights of Christians and of religious minorities,” explained Syrian Catholic Archbishop Georges Casmoussa of Mosul, Iraq.
Last week the Wall Street Journal dedicated one of its editorials to the suffering of the Iraqi Christian minority. It also showed the level of religious ignorance there is, even in reliable newspapers.
The Wall Street Journal said Christian and Muslims had been peacefully living together since the time of Jesus Christ. This is hardly the case, as Islam started hundreds of years after Christ.
However, it is true that Muslims and the tiny Catholic community in Iraq lived for centuries in peace. They were not persecuted, even during the Saddam Hussein era. The trouble started after the downfall of Hussein and the rise to power of the Shiite Muslims.
These troubles linked the Catholics of Iraq with Malta, as a wave of Iraqi Catholics refugees reached our shores in the mid-1990s. Most were well-educated people – surgeons, engineers, technicians, doctors.
At RTK, where I was executive chairman, I employed one of them as an engineer. His wife had a masters in climate studies from a British university and is now an assistant professor at a Canadian university.
Her brother and sister lived with me and my father for a number of months. They told me horror stories about the lives of the Iraqi people, but the Church as an institution was not persecuted. They attributed this to the presence of Tariq Aziz, a Christian, in Hussein’s cabinet.
After his downfall, Muslim fundamentalism reared its head and the real trouble began for the Catholic community. After the American-led invasion in 2003, things went from bad to worse. Murders, abductions, attacks on churches and physical violence created tension and terror among the community.
It is estimated that more than half of Iraq’s Christian community – estimated between 800,000 to 1.4 million – have now left the country. The others are determined to stay. Will they be able to brave the difficult environment?
The worst violence against Catholics was the attack on a Syrian Catholic church in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on October 31. As police moved in to rescue Catholics held hostage by Islamic militants with ties to Al-Qaida, 58 people, including two priests, were killed.
During a homily, the Syrian Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan referred to the cover-up of “the terror targeting Iraqi Christians. It is the responsibility of the Iraqi government to carry out proper and thorough investigations to uncover the terrorist groups who plan and finance the carnage, of whatever religious or political allegiance they may be, and to bring them publicly to justice.”
The Iraqi government is now building concrete walls around churches in Baghdad and Mosul to provide security for worshippers. Police presence has been beefed up.
Quite naturally these security measures make church-goers feel they are entering a military camp more than a place of worship. On the other hand, the measures make them feel more protected.
Remember the Catholics of Iraq in your prayers.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt