Vatican Radio reported the news. The Nuncio to Damascus, Mario Zenari, says “the civil conflict needs to be resolved but at the same time the advance of this Caliphate needs to be halted”
Syro-Catholic archbishop, Jacques Behnan Hindo, confirmed the news, adding that “more than a thousand Christian Assyrian and Chaldean families [have] fled”. The CNN reports that jihadists are about to publish a video message in which they threaten to kill the hostages.
Before a brutal civil war engulfed Syria, the country was testament to the religious and ethnic diversity of the Middle East. Arabs of different faiths, Kurds, Armenians, Assyrian Christians and others lived side by side, embracing a rather durable Syrian nationalism.
Assyrians living on the banks of the Khabur River in the north-eastern part of Syria are being targeted by extremists. A boy has been killed. “We feel abandoned” says Archbishop Hindo.
The brutal murder of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya at the hands of ISIS last week is shining a light on the reality faced by many of Egypt’s Christians on a daily basis.
“These 21 victims, they were not the first and they will not be the last. There is a flowing river of Christian blood in the Middle East,” said Mina Abdelmalak, one of the organizers of a D.C. candlelight prayer vigil outside the White House on Ash Wednesday.
Christians and other religious minorities in northern Iraq face extermination if people of faith in America and elsewhere in the West fail to speak up on their behalf.
A new religious liberty group, the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, conducted a fact-finding trip to the region early this year and then released a sobering report. “Edge of Extinction” documents the attempted genocide of Christians, Yezidis, Shabaks and other religious minorities by the Islamic State.
Even though her village was seized by the Islamic State and she’s now living a rough life in an unfinished mall in Kurdish-protected Northern Iraq, a displaced Christian refugee child is asking God to “forgive” the ISIS militants.
After ISIS seized most of the Mosul region of Iraq last June, over 400 mostly Christian displaced Iraqi families from the villages of Qaraqosh, Bartella and Kharamles descended upon the Kurdish capital of Erbil to live in a half-built mall in the in the Christian neighborhood of Ainkawa.
The private meeting between the two, in the Vatican, lasted 40 minutes. The German Chancellor made a donation for children and refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East. This was the third time the two met.
The news of the beheading of 21 young Egyptian Copts by the Islamic State (IS) in Libya has plunged Egypt into sorrow and mourning. The families of those killed remain prostrate in a suffering that is even physical, comforted by their communities in prayer. Many Muslims also share in their pain. It is clear, as pointed out by many thinkers and political leaders that the events resulted in unifying the nation more strongly.
The “grave conflict” was the focus of Francis’ speech to Ukraine’s bishops. Three separate copies were handed out to the prelates who are in Rome for their ad limina apostolorum visit. The Pope said he finds it painful that “misunderstandings and injuries” exist among Christians.
