Yezidi leaders meet with Pope Francis
January 08, 2015
Pope Francis met on January 8 with representatives of Iraq’s Yezidi minority, which has faced brutal persecution by the Islamic State.
The leader of the world’s Yezidi community, Mir Tahsin Said Ali Beg, met with the Pontiff along with the spiritual leader of the sect, Sheikh Khato. They reported on the current plight of the Yezidis in northern Iraq and Kurdistan, and thanked the Pope for his support of Iraq’s persecuted minorities.
The Yezidi leaders said that their community had good relations with Christians in their region. More somberly they reported that since the Islamic State seized territory in northern Iraq, about 5,000 Yezidi woman have been taken as slaves.
There are about 1.5 million Yezidis in the world, of whom roughly one-third live in Iraq, in territory now controlled by the Islamic State and in Kurdistan. The remainder are spread across neighboring Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia, or scattered elsewhere around the world.
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