KARAMLES (AsiaNews): Four years ago, when the Islamic State (IS) rolled through Iraq, the “great exodus began,” with refugees fleeing towards Kurdistan to escape jihadi militias. For Father Paul Thabit Mekko, head of the Christian community in Karamles in the Niniveh Plain, “the return and the presence” of Christians stands in contrast, as they their attention towards the future with “new eyes and spirit.”
 

ERBIL (AsiaNews): Even a thick layer of soot covering the walls of the church was not enough to obliterate graffiti proclaiming Islamic State scrawled across the remains of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Qaraqosh, Iraq, from sight, as Archbishop Petros Mouche prepared to offer the first Mass in the remains of the once stately building in two years on October 30.

KRAKOW (SE): “I asked Jesus for the grace to forgive every time I pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet. But instead of praying ‘For the sake of his sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world,’ I pray ‘have mercy on the Islamic State and on the whole world’,” Christina Shabo, who was born under a tree in a refugee camp after her family fled the bombing in Iraq in 1991, said in a testimony on July 29 at World Youth Day in Krakow.

JERUSALEM (SE): “We are in great danger, our diocese is at an end,” the Syrian Catholic bishop of Mosul in Iraq, Archbishop Youhanna Boutros, told a preparation symposium for the World Day of the Sick in Jerusalem on February 16.

“The Islamic State no longer recognises any dignity of the human being, because for them, the value of life is zero, comparable to that of a cow or a pack of cigarettes,” Archbishop Boutros said.

HONG KONG (SE): Satellite pictures obtained by The Associated Press on January 20 have confirmed that the Islamic State has destroyed the ruins Iraq’s oldest monastery, built in the sixth century.

The destruction of Dair Mar Elia (St. Elijah’s Monastery) in Mosul in all probability took place in the late summer of 2014.

Baghdad (Agencies): Influential Iraqi Shiite leader, Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Sadrist Movement, has backed a call for the return of homes and property stolen from Christians in Baghdad, Kirkuk and other Iraqi cities, according to a report by the Fides news agency.