‘Christ’s love transcends the evil committed by the Islamic State,’ says Iraqi prelate

August 07, 2015

One year after 120,000 Christians of the Nineveh plain fled from the advance of the Islamic State, an Iraqi prelate spoke of the daily challenges faced by refugees in Erbil, a city of 1.5 million that is capital of the autonomous region of Kurdistan.

“Today we can say that Iraqi Kurdistan is safe and its government is of great help to us,” said Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil. “Now we wait for the liberation of our lands but, more importantly, we expect them to be made safe before we can start reconstruction.”

“As a bishop I must take care of the daily needs of my people and show them that Christ’s love transcends the evil committed by the Islamic State,” who said that refugees are no longer living in tents and that 11 schools have been constructed for them.

Archbishop Warda, who is founding a Catholic university in Erbil, told AsiaNews that “our ancestors chose education as a means of promoting culture in the land of Mesopotamia, which was theirs when it was invaded from the Arab desert at the time of Islam’s expansion. The situation is very similar today, with Christians facing the onslaught of the Islamic State.”

 

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Further information:

• For Erbil archbishop, education will save Christians from the barbarity of the Islamic State (AsiaNews.it)
• Catholic university to open in Iraq (CWN, 7/24)