Our Iraqi brothers and sisters

During the World Youth Day in Cracow, among many wonderful meetings that we had with various wonderful people, I remember in particular the meeting with Iraqi youth who participated in the mass with the Pope.

They approached our group a few times. For the first time, they saw our huge flag after the opening mass. In the middle of a huge crowd, they stopped us and asked to take a picture together with us. We were happy to agree and continued the walk towards the city centre where we met again that same evening.

Finally, on Sunday morning, before the mass with the Pope there was time for a longer meeting and conversations. We happened to be in the same sector (A1, very close to the altar). The young Iraqis came again to see us. This time besides common pictures, we shared some conversation. The group was mostly from Kirkuk, but some were also from Erbil, Baghdad and Mosul. His Beatitude Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako encouraged them to participate in the WYD. Just like our group, they had had a year of preparation, prayers and meetings, before coming to Poland.

It is interesting that many Christians in Iraq speak a dialect of Syriac-Aramaic, which, they claim is a language similar to the one that Jesus spoke. The Chaldean Catholic Church presently comprises around 500,000 people. Most Chaldeans and their non-Catholic Assyrian brothers and sisters, live now in northern Iraq, with smaller numbers in adjacent areas in north eastern Syria, south eastern Turkey and north western Iran, a region roughly corresponding with what Assyria was between the 25th century BC and the end of the 7th century BC. Today, there are also many Chaldeans and Assyrians in the diaspora, primarily in the American states of Michigan, Illinois and California.

We talked about the history of Christianity in Iraq, a history that began according to tradition with the visit of Saint Thomas on his way to India, but mostly about the present situation of the Church in that country. According to the flyers that they distributed there were problems already in 2003 (after the US intervention) and many Christians started to be targeted by extremists and threatened. On June 10, 2014, ISIS invaded Mosul and two months later they also occupied the Nineveh Plain. Around 120 000 of Christians were displaced, forced to live in schools, parish churches and camps.

The young people told us that they are waiting patiently and hopefully to return to their homes in the near future. We assured them of our daily prayer for peace in Iraq and in all the Middle East. May God bless all our friends in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey and Palestine that we met during the World Youth Day!