'Catastrophe' at hand for Iraqi Christians, nun tells Congress

May 13, 2015

Christians in Iraq are “on the edge of a terrible catastrophe,” an Iraqi nun said in May 13 testimony before the foreign-affairs committee of the US House of Representatives.

Sister Diana Momeka, a Dominican sister who was forced to flee from Mosul, testified in Washington pleaded for help for Iraqi Christians, saying that persecution by the Islamic State has been more brutal than any suffering endured by the country’s Christians in over 1300 years. She also testified that the help furnished by Iraqi government officials for Christian refugees has been “at best modest and slow.”

The Dominican sister told the House committee how she and her religious community had been forced to abandon their convent in Mosul after it was bombed. The city and the adjoining Nineveh region was soon overrun by Islamic radicals, and Christians were forced out, she said: “Nineveh was emptied of Christians, and sadly, for the first time since the 7th century AD, no church bells rang for Mass in the Plain of Nineveh.”

“This uprooting, this theft of everything that the Christians owned, displaced them body and soul, stripping away their humanity and dignity,” Sister Momeka testified. She made a plea for help in recovering the lands seized by the Islamic State, and support for rebuilding efforts. The Christians of Iraq, she stressed, do not want to abandon their homeland, but to return and rebuild the Christian presence.

Sister Momeka came to Washington after her supporters pressed the Obama administration to approve a one-week visa for her visit. Her application for a visa had originally been denied, with the State Department saying that she had not provided assurances that she would not remain in the US after her visa had expired. The State Department later said that the denial had been due to misunderstanding.

 

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Further information:

• Sister Diana Testifies About Suffering of Christians and Other Religious Minorities in Iraq (Christian Newswire)
• US denies visa to Iraqi nun, scheduled to testify about Islamic State persecution (CWN, 5/1)