Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda of Irbil, Iraq, gestures alongside Melkite Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart of Aleppo, Syria, during an Aug. 4 news conference at the Knights of Columbus 133rd Supreme Convention in Philadelphia. (Credit: Matthew Barrick/Knights of Columbus via CNS.)
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Christopher
White, Dec 1, 2017
UNITED
NATIONS — In the midst of the U.S. bishops’ “Solidarity in Suffering” campaign,
designed as a Week of Awareness and Education for Persecuted Christians,
leaders from Iraq on Thursday urged the United Nations and the international community
to recognize Christians as key to stabilizing the Middle East.
The
Holy See’s Mission to the United Nations, the Knights of Columbus, and the
Nineveh Reconstruction Committee on Thursday co-sponsored a UN panel called
“Preserving Pluralism and Diversity in the Nineveh Region,” a discussion
focused on improving the conditions for minority communities who have been
previously driven out of the region and establishing a framework to allow them
to return, settle, and prosper. (The Knights of Columbus are a principal
sponsor of Crux.)
In
2014, the Islamic State pillaged the Nineveh Plains, a region in northeast Iraq
that has historically been inhabited predominantly by Christian communities.
While ISIS has now been driven out and defeated, the situation remains fragile
with many ethnic and religious minorities unsure whether they should risk
returning and current residents considering if the worst is still to come.
Archbishop
Bernardito Auza, apostolic nuncio to the United Nations, chaired the meeting
and said the Holy See was committed to “ensuring the conditions for them [Iraqi
minorities] to return to their places of origin and live in dignity and safety
with the basic social, political, and economic frameworks necessary to ensure
to community cohesion.”
“Do
Not Forget the Persecuted People”
Father
Salar Kajo, Vicar General of the Chaldean Catholic Diocese of Alquoch and
pastor of parishes in Teleskof, Batnaya, and Baqofa, opened the discussion with
a personal account of his pastoral ministry.
Kajo
described his region as “100 percent Christian towns” and inhabited by
individuals where the Church was the “center of their life.”
“Ever
since 2014, people have always looked first to the Church for their survival
and their support,” said Kajo.
Kajo
described the recent years as a challenge for the remnant of Christians who
have been fighting to keep alive one of the world’s oldest Christian
communities. “You must understand these are peaceful people without any
military or political power,” said Kajo. “They want only to live in peace on
their own land.”
In a
mere 24-hour period in August 2014, entire towns were left abandoned by
Christians being chased out by ISIS. For two years, these Christians lived as
displaced people, surviving primarily with outside Christian charitable
support.
After
2016, when many of the towns were liberated from ISIS, Christians returned to
the region to find destroyed churches and their infrastructure in ruin. They
begin the process of rebuilding, with over 1,000 families returning to the town
of Teleskof.
This
past September, however, they were told they must once more evacuate due to
more fighting that would begin 24 hours later, yet Kajo and his fellow Church
leaders refused to leave.
“We
would not give up our town to destruction once again,” he said.
Following
U.S. government intervention, a ceasefire was established and the town was not
destroyed — yet Kajo offered this as just one example of the precarious state
of both the country and its citizens — and a Church that is working to provide
both spiritual and practical support.
Kajo
urged the international community to recognize the desperate plight of the
people of the Nineveh plains. “They sleep with suitcases already packed,” he
said.
“If
stability cannot come in these next few months, the Christians will leave the
land of Nineveh forever,” he warned. “I ask this body, please do not forget the
persecuted minorities of the Nineveh plains.”
Winning
the Battle of Ideas
Archbishop
Bashar Matti Warda, who was installed as the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of
Erbil in 2010, told the U.N. audience that Christians are a “key partner for
the future of pluralism in Iraq” and “part of the solution, not part of the
problem in terms of bringing peace and human rights to Iraq.”
In
order to more effectively work both in the region and with the international
community, the three major Christian churches of Iraq — the Chaldean Catholics,
Syrian Catholics, and Syrian Orthodox — have formed the Nineveh Reconstruction
Committee to work together in unity to preserve their respective communities.
Warda
said that in the past, there have been missteps by the individual groups not
following the proper channels or indirectly competing against one another.
He
said he believes the new body will more effectively serve the collective whole
of Christians in Iraq, which now must confront two major obstacles:
reconstruction, and winning the battle of ideas as they make the case that
pluralism is good for both Christians and the rest of the country.
Carl
Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, called attention to the
fact that the United States, the European Union, and many other leaders have
spoken out against ISIS’s actions against minority communities in the region as
genocide. “Pluralism and co-existence have no place in communities under Daesh
control,” said Anderson, using an Arabic term for ISIS commonly used by its
opponents.
Anderson
offered a strong rejection of Daesh’s intent to destroy pluralism and extolled
the “spiritual and moral vision” offered by the Universal Declaration of the
Human Rights, established by the United Nations in 1948 that has “given hope to
billions in expressing the fundamental dignity of human persons…and that evil
and darkness must not have the last word.”
While
ISIS has declined as a political force within the region, Anderson cautioned
that their ideas still held power. “Will Daesh win ideologically, even as it
loses militarily?” he asked.
Anderson
urged the international community not to merely focus on the practical needs
but to win the “battle of ideas,” and to recognize, that the future of the
Nineveh region depends on a strong global backing of pluralism where minorities
can “exist and flourish.”
A
Plea to Learn Christian History
While
Warda and his fellow Iraqi Christians are grateful for the support of the
international community, in an interview with Crux, he said one of the
challenges that remains is that many Americans fail to recognize the
significant role the region and its people have played in the history of the
faith.
“Remember
that the Christians in the Middle East and the area in Syria, for example, are
the ones who baptized Saint Paul,” said Warda.
“We
are a very old and historical community. The Christians in Iraq are the ones
who spread Christianity and spread the Gospel in Persia up to India and China…I
would really love to see every American to know about such rich history,” Warda
said.
“It’s
not so much just about praying for the persecuted Christians, but also to know
who are they are,” Warda said. “Some people would probably say, ‘if we care for
them, let us bring them here to America, where they could live in a safe
environment.’
“But
what about feeling a sense of mission?” he asked. “If we leave all of these
lands…then probably we will lose one important and vital community, which has
really played an important part in the region there.”
Echoing
that same sentiment, Anderson encouraged the United Nations’ audience to close
the information gap both in terms of general knowledge about the region and its
history, but also its people of the past and present.
“We
as Americans did not know the Iraqi people well,” he said. “If we knew them
better, I think we might have avoided some of the tragedies of the last
decade.”
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