Iraqi bishops explain Christian exodus from country
Christians in postwar Iraq, already a tiny minority in the mostly Muslim country, continue to leave because of fear for their safety, and to a lesser extent, because of economic difficulties, Iraqi bishops said.
Catholic News reports that help from the international community are needed immediately if the flight of Christians is to be stopped.
Kidnappings for ransom, bombings of churches and other Christian buildings and a general lack of security have made life so dangerous for the vulnerable Christian community that about half have left their homeland for safer destinations in the past seven years, the bishops said.
At least one bishop raised the question of systematic attacks as part of a “plan” to drive all Christians from the Middle East.
Iraqi bishops and priests painted a picture of extreme hardship for the small Christian community sticking it out in the country torn by violence since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Since the year 2003, Christians are the victims of a killing situation, which has provoked a great emigration from Iraq,” Syrian Archbishop Athanase Matoka of Baghdad told synod participants Oct. 16.
He blamed the invasion for bringing to Iraq in general and Christians in particular “destruction and ruin on all levels.”
Archbishop Matoka said that while violence targeting Christians appeared to have dropped off in the last two years, the general insecurity and instability of the situation in the country is such that Christians continue to emigrate.
“Where is the world conscience?” he asked. “We ask the great powers: Is it true that there is a plan to empty the Middle East of Christians and that Iraq is one of the victims?”
In a briefing with journalists Oct. 18, Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad said that in the past he also suspected that there was a plot to rid the Middle East of Christians. “If you ask me by whom, or how, I don’t know,” he said. However, there has never been such mass emigration in the history of the country, he said.
At least 20 churches have been bombed, two bishops have been kidnapped and one of them killed, and some 20 priests abducted and tortured, Bishop Warduni said.
Whether or not there is targeted persecution of Christians, he said, what is driving them away now is the fact that “there is no peace, there is no security, there are no jobs.”
He made an appeal to world leaders to “take our wealth, but leave us in peace.”
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