Free Republic

The idea can no longer be shrugged off as a mere pipe dream -- the hope of the thousands of Iraqi Christians who were evicted from their villages three years ago by the criminal incursions of Islamic State (ISIS) -- that they might one day be able to return to their homes on the Plains of Nineveh. With the March 27th signing ceremony in the offices of the archdiocese of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Erbil, an agreement was reached between three Christian churches in Iraq -- the Syriac Catholic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Chaldean Catholic Church...

Chaldean Catholic church whose image announced the fall of Mosul in 2014 has been liberated. When so-called Islamic State (ISIS) swept through Iraq in June 2014, a ‘before-and-after’ picture of the Church of Our Mother of Perpetual help in Mosul emerged showing the crucifix topping the building replaced by the black banner of the terror group. Reports at the time detailed how the Christian community desperately fled the city as ISIS rapidly imposed its rule there. Now, liberating forces have revealed how the Perpetual Help became a central location for that rule. According to emerging reports, ISIS fighters quickly identified...

The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See, said that he opposed US President Donald Trump’s decision to “prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual’s country of nationality.” “Every reception policy that discriminates the persecuted and suffering on religious grounds,” Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako told the Fides news agency, “ultimately harms the Christians of the East, because among other things provides arguments to all propaganda and prejudice that attack native...

Mar Sako speaks of "grass roots revolt" against terrorism and violence, combined with a renewed commitment "in defense of life." The authorities in Basra for the first time celebrate the New Year and ask Christians to come back. A group of young Muslim Shiites of Najaf attend Mass in the capital and have lunch with the patriarch. Several Baghdad streets festooned with Christmas trees.Baghdad (AsiaNews) - In Iraq we are witnessing " grass roots revolt against terrorism, against violence", accompanied by a renewed commitment to the "defense of life, of peace, of joy"; in this way "it is possible to...

Around Christmas 2015, numerous voices within the international community raised their concerns that the persecution of Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq reached the threshold of "genocide" under international law. The movement was highly visible in the United States, led by the Knights of Columbus, followed by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention Russell Moore, and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Despite growing consensus on the issue in the United States, the U.S. Government has remained silent for...

Iraqi Christians are holding on to their faith in God as they plan to revive a town that was ravaged by the Islamic State. Around 60,000 people fled from the Christian town of Qaraqosh when ISIS took over the region in August 2014. Some of the Iraqi Christians are now seeing the devastation left by the terrorist group after the town was liberated by the Kurdish militia a few weeks ago. Sister Diana, a Dominican nun, recently paid a visit to the Immaculate Conception Cathedral and saw how the Islamic radicals desecrated the building. "This is considered the largest church...

BASHIQA, Iraq (Reuters) - The bells have rung out after two years of silence in the Mar Korkeis church in the town of Bashiqa, some 15 km (10 miles) north of Mosul, Islamic State's last major city stronghold in Iraq. Kurdish Peshmerga fighters retook the town on Nov. 7, ending two years of rule by the hardline Sunni group which persecuted Christians and other minorities in the Nineveh plains, one of the world's oldest centres of Christianity. Women trilled to celebrate the moment when a new crucifix was erected on the church, replacing one that was broken by the Islamic...

They were threatened, forced to spit on a crucifix or convert to Islam, but a handful of Iraqi Christians miraculously survived more than two years under Islamic State group rule. When the jihadists swept across the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq in August 2014 and told Christians to convert, pay tax, leave or die, around 120,000 of them fled. Now that Iraqi forces have retaken many of those areas around the city of Mosul, stories are emerging of those who did not get a chance to leave and faced one of the three other options. Ismail Matti was 14 when...

A tomb had been desecrated and statue of the Virgin Mary was decapitated at the St Addai Chaldean Catholic churchThere were gasps, followed by tears at a small church in northern Iraq as a group of Christians returned to their parish Sunday to find that everything had been destroyed, including the statue of the Virgin Mary, which ISIS militants had decapitated before they left. A confessional had been turned into a closet, a tomb had been desecrated, red prayer benches were burned. As Fr Thabet Habib recited prayers at the St Addai Chaldean Catholic Church, the sound of broken glass...

“Obama has never helped the Christians. In fact, he despises them. In the last 26 months, he has shown he despises all of them. But we have hope in the new president, Trump.” IRAQI Christians will pray for Donald Trump’s election victory after they condemned US Government for “abandoning” them to the barbaric terror of Islamic State. The Christian community in the latest Iraqi town to be freed from ISIS have opened up about how they were terrorized at the hands of the twisted jihadi militants. The once-bustling Qaraqosh, which boasted of more than 50,000 Christian residents, was recaptured from...

Church bells ring out in the Iraqi town of Bartella for the first time in years. As Iraqi forces continue their offensive against the ISIS-held city of Mosul, reports and images of the re-capturing of a string of villages and towns outside the city have hit the international media. Video aired on France 24 shows a group of Christian militia fighters from Bartella, a town 13 miles east of Mosul, returning home after having been driven out by ISIS two years ago. Their first actions on entering their village? Erecting a cross, ringing the church bells for the first time...

Iraq’s parliament on Saturday voted to ban the sale, import and production of alcohol, in a surprise move likely to anger some minorities but also to please influential religious parties. Proponents of the ban argue that it is justified by the constitution, which prohibits any law contradicting Islam. But some opponents argue that it also violates the same constitution which guarantees the traditions of religious minorities.

An interview with the filmmakers behind “Our Last Stand,” a new documentary about the on-going genocide perpetrated against Middle Eastern ChristiansA young boy, 10 years old or so, faces the camera. Like many young boys, he is happy to be interviewed. This is war-torn Iraq, however, so he tells of the day ISIS came to his village. He starts to recount, horror after horror, what took place. It is hard to accept that one so young has already seen so much evil. Gradually, his retelling of what happened slows and he breaks down. It is hard to watch as the...

Protection units Nineveh Plain NPU fighters kindle the flame back at the center of Khazar The fighters celebrate by lighting the torch back on the occasion of the Cross Festival , included several events, including the reading of the message of St. Paul to the Corinthians, and then read the text of the Gospel of Luke 21, and then poems and hymns, and then read a statement from the protection units of the Nineveh plain on this occasion. And part of this statement says: Two years after we moved and the displacement of many Christians from Mosul and Nineveh...

Myriam, ISIS may have weapons and financial power, while you don't even have a house. But you are much stronger because of the power of forgiveness and love that Jesus has planted in your little heart. "By their fruit you will recognize them" - Matthew 7:16. And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

As operations to retake the militant-held city of Mosul ramp up, Iraqi Christians displaced from the area by the Islamic State group say that even if the militants are defeated militarily, the country will not be safe for minorities. Qaraqosh, the biggest Christian town on the Nineveh plains in Iraq’s north, fell to IS more than two years ago and remains under militant control. Most of its displaced inhabitants are living in camps in Iraq’s Kurdish region. Hundreds of others fled to neighboring countries, Europe, the United States and further afield. …

Erbil, Iraq, May 28, 2016 / 05:13 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday, the first of three rounds of displaced Iraqi children made their First Communion in a refugee camp in Erbil, providing a silver lining to an otherwise bleak situation. Out of the 5,500 people living in Erbil’s Aishty 2 camp for the displaced, the majority – more than 2,000 – are children. Of these, 470 will make their First Communion in the coming weeks. The number of children receiving the sacrament is up from last year’s class, which numbered about 400. Since this year’s number of recipients is so...

Reports surfaced Tuesday that ISIS had attacked the Christian city of Tel Askuf in Iraq. An intense firefight ensued involving local Kurdish Peshmerga troops and training forces from the Sons of Liberty International (SOLI), a group founded and run by Matthew Van Dyke. Unfortunately, one Navy SEAL gave his life defending the Christian city. His name has yet to be released. Jason Butrill, head researcher for The Glenn Beck Program and a former member of counterintelligence with U.S. Special Forces, received communication from Van Dyke’s team as the fighting went down. “This area that has been attacked is the Christian...

Mosul (Agenzia Fides) - The jihadists of the Islamic State (Daesh) have released via the internet a short video documenting the burning of Christian books in the area of Mosul. The images show a militant jihadist who throws in flames books and dossiers that have crucifixes on the cover. The video, launched under the title "The Diwan (office) for Education destroys books regarding Christian Education in Mosul", was released on the net at the end of last week through the application Android jihadist Amaq News, with the intent to promptly disseminate all the news that concerns operations and terrorist attacks...

U.S. Christian Groups Support Muslim Refugees, Ignore Persecuted Christians If this is how influential Christian groups behave, is there any wonder at the Obama administration's pro-Muslim, anti-Christian biases? January 4, 2016 Raymond Ibrahim Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom CenterAccording to recently released figures from the State Dept., the United States has let in a miniscule number of Christian refugees from Syria -- only 34 -- during the four years since the Islamic State began its campaign of mass slaughter. Put differently, although Christians amount for 10 percent of Syria's population--and so should at...