{"id":30985,"date":"2018-10-02T08:22:20","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T08:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.acnmalta.org\/?p=30985"},"modified":"2018-10-02T08:22:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T08:22:20","slug":"iraqi-christians-rising-like-the-pheonix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2018\/10\/02\/iraqi-christians-rising-like-the-pheonix\/","title":{"rendered":"IRAQI CHRISTIANS: \u00a0RISING LIKE THE PHEONIX!"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><\/style><h2 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b style=\"color: #000000;\">IRAQI CHRISTIANS, RISING LIKE THE <\/b><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b>PHOENIX<\/b><\/span><b style=\"color: #000000;\">!<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Christians in Iraq have suffered long years of persecution and Christianity in the region has been threatened with extinction. With the coalition led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the 2014 attacks by ISIS, the number of Christians in Iraq has fallen from 1.2 million to less than 350,000 today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In July 2017, Iraqi forces liberated Mosul and the approximately 12 Christian villages on the Nineveh plains and thankfully Iraqi Christian IDPs are slowly returning to their homes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">For more than a year, more and more people are coming back and life is gradually picking up again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Since 2014, Aid to the Church in Need has been at the forefront, contributing to emergency relief projects: rental housing, education, food and the livelihoods of displaced persons, sheltering mainly in the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Erbil and in 2017, the Foundation commissioned a Damage Assessment Survey to catalogue the level of destruction of almost 13,000 homes and 360 Church properties in the Nineveh Plains.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In 3 villages in the Nineveh plains, ACN has already begun the reconstruction of the first 105 houses belonging to displaced Christian families.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Father Georges Jahola, a Syriac Catholic priest is currently leading the reconstruction of his hometown Karakosh &#8211; known by the Christians as Baghdeda in Aramaic.\u00a0 This was once the largest Christian city in the region.\u00a0As in the other places on the Nineveh Plain, the so-called &#8220;Islamic State&#8221; has also left a wreckage in Karakosh.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Speaking in an interview with ACN last week, Fr. Jahola revealed that\u00a0 \u201cReconstruction is progressing well, thanks to the support we receive.\u00a0Our most important partner is and remains &#8220;Aid to the Church in Need&#8221;.\u00a0I admire how much help we receive from the benefactors.\u00a0That is a great sign of hope for us.\u00a0In my hometown of Karakosch, we have already restored 35 per cent of homes in just 16 months.\u00a0In the Nineveh Plains, there is already over 41 per cent.\u00a0Many volunteers participate.\u00a0The renovation of the partially damaged and collapse-endangered houses is completed.\u00a0Now we tackle the burned and completely destroyed houses.\u201d, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0According to Fr. Jahola, \u201cwe are already celebrating church services and festivals in the churches, even though they are almost all badly damaged and partially destroyed.\u00a0For example, I celebrated the liturgy with the Syriac Catholic community of Karakosch in a soot-blackened church, in which concrete parts fall from the ceiling again and again.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cThe help we receive is a great sign of brotherhood!\u00a0Every single post shows us that somewhere in the world someone thinks of us.\u00a0&#8220;Aid to the Church in Need&#8221; makes that visible to us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The return of Christians to the Nineveh plains is of utmost importance to the Christian presence in the Middle East and it guarantees a peace-building process in this region.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cWhen Christians leave the Nineveh Plain, Muslims very often try to acquire their property.\u00a0This tendency dates back to the eighties and nineties.\u00a0For example, the small town of Telkef, about 20 kilometres north of Mosul, used to be a predominantly Christian city.\u00a0Today only 20 per cent of Christians live there.\u00a0Similar developments are currently in Bartella.\u00a0There, members of the Shabak ethnic group are trying to buy more and more buildings.\u00a0 That is a very real danger!\u201d, said Fr. Jahola.<\/span><\/p>\n<h5 style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em><strong>ACN Malta<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IRAQI CHRISTIANS, RISING LIKE THE PHOENIX! Christians in Iraq have suffered long years of persecution and Christianity in the region has been threatened with extinction. With the coalition led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the 2014 attacks by ISIS, the number of Christians in Iraq has fallen from 1.2 million to less than 350,000&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30987,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-e-newsletters"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>IRAQI CHRISTIANS: \u00a0RISING LIKE THE PHEONIX! - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/acnmalta.org\/_oldsite\/2018\/10\/02\/iraqi-christians-rising-like-the-pheonix\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"IRAQI CHRISTIANS: \u00a0RISING LIKE THE PHEONIX! - Aid to the Church in Need (Malta)\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"IRAQI CHRISTIANS, RISING LIKE THE PHOENIX! 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