Isis training center in Christian church, Iraq. Credit: Lena Ha/Shutterstock
Ishtartv.com
- catholicnewsagency.com
The rebuilding of a Syriac
Catholic church in Mosul, Iraq, destroyed by ISIS will begin soon, the U.N.’s
heritage agency (UNESCO) announced last week.
Al-Tahera church, in the old city
of Mosul, was severely damaged after ISIS invaded the city in June of 2014.
Among numerous documented murders
and other atrocities committed against Christians and other religious and
ethnic minorities in the area, ISIS destroyed at least 28 significant religious
sites in the city, one of which was the Al-Tahera church.
The church suffered extensive
damage to its arcade and outer wall which must be rebuilt, as well as its
remaining ceiling which will be demolished and reconstructed. Landmines inside
the church will also have to be removed.
UNESCO announced in October that
it was partnering with the United Arab Emirates to rebuild the church which was
built in 1862. The partnership said that another church in the city, the
Dominican Al-Saa'a church which dates to 1873, will also be rebuilt.
The reconstruction will be part
of the agency-led “Revive the Spirit of Mosul” initiative. UNESCO says the
reconstruction project will create jobs and provide further education,
training, and experience for local young professionals and craftsmen.
The second largest city in Iraq,
Mosul is the seat of two bishoprics in Iraq for the Chaldean Catholic and
Syriac Catholic churches. Its Christian population fell from 35,000 in 2003 to
only around 15,000 at the time of the ISIS invasion in 2014.
After the ISIS takeover of Mosul
and the surrounding region, there were numerous reports of militants forcing
Christians to convert to Islam, pay a tax, or be killed.
The Syriac Catholic Patriarch of
Antioch estimated that ISIS killed 500 people in its conquest; thousands were
killed during the ISIS occupation and nearly one million people fled the city.
In 2016, a report by the Knights
of Columbus and In Defense of Christians documented accounts by victims or
witnesses of killings, rapes, and girls and women being forced into sex
slavery. A separate U.N. report said that ISIS had abducted 800 to 900 children
in Mosul and subjected them to religious and military training.
In March of 2016, the U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that ISIS was committing genocide against
Christians, Yezidis, and Shi’a Muslims in Iraq and Syria.
ISIS was driven out of Mosul in
2017, but conditions in the city and in much of Northern Iraq remain tenuous
for Christians.
Barely 40 Christians have
returned to live in Mosul, according to Syriac Catholic priest Father Amanuel
Adel Kloo, in an interview with Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) from July of
2019. Around 1,000 other Christians commute into the city to attend the
University of Mosul by day, but they leave the city at night due to continued
fears of insecurity, he said.
In an April, 2019, interview with
ACN, Archbishop Petros Mouche of the Syriac-Catholic Archdiocese of Mosul
expressed concern at a lack of funds to rebuild homes in the region and “very
few initiatives” for jobs.
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