A family at the Khazair checkpoint after fleeing from Mosul, Iraq on June 11, 2014. Credit: R. Nuri UNHCR-ACNUR via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).
Posted on 07/30/2014 5:08:53 AM PDT by NYer
.- The U.S. bishops have urged the U.S. government to assist Iraqi Christian victims of persecution, while France has offered asylum to Iraqi Christians who have fled Mosul.
“The Islamic State has taken control of large swaths of territory in northern Iraq, leaving a trail of destruction, burning and looting ancient churches and mosques, homes and businesses,” Bishop Richard E. Pates, the U.S. bishops’ chairman of International Justice and Peace, said July 25.
“Thousands have fled with little more than the clothes on their backs, often being robbed of their few personal possessions as they ran,” he said in a letter to U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
Bishop Pates, who heads the Diocese of Des Moines, Iowa, cited a July 22 statement from bishops of the Chaldean Catholic, Syrian Catholic, Syrian Orthodox and Armenian Churches.
The Iraqi bishops appealed to the Iraqi government to protect Christians’ rights and the rights of other minorities targeted for violence and displacement. They also urged financial assistance and social services for the displaced.
Bishop Pates stressed the need for humanitarian aid directly provided to minority communities through trusted non-governmental organizations in order to prevent its diversion to other purposes.
He urged the U.S. government to “do all it can to provide this critical assistance to those in desperate straits and to work with other governments in an effort to stop the violence.”
Bishop Pates cited Pope Francis’ words, “violence is defeated with peace.”
Iraq’s Christians have been hit particularly hard by the rise of the jihadist group Islamic State in Iraq and Levant, known as ISIS or ISIL.
Only 20 Christian families remain in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, an ancient center of Christianity, following the city’s conquest by ISIS forces, the BBC reports.
Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako of Babylon, who is based in Baghdad, estimated that there were about 35,000 Christians in Mosul before the city’s fall, down from 60,000 before the 2003 U.S. invasion.
The French government has offered asylum to the Iraqi Christians who have fled Mosul.
“We are ready, if they so desire, to help facilitate asylum on our territory,” France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius and interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, members of the ruling Socialist government, said in a joint statement.
French opposition party the National Front on July 26 held a rally in Paris to support Iraqi Christians, BBC News reports.
Obama thanks Muslims for ‘building the very fabric of our nation’
Ping!
Flies in the face of George W. Bush’s views on Islam, too — doesn’t it?
Not a chance. The current US administration hates Christians and loves their persecutors.
The jug-eared communist moslem sympathizer will turn a deaf ear to these pleas.
He only has ears for the swarms of illegal alien democrat voters invading our southern borders with impunity.
Funny how it works in other countries:
We live in Southern California, and we're Catholic, active Catholics in our community, and there was a town hall meeting last evening, emergency meeting called by our local parish priest, ordered by our bishop (unintelligible) and the Archdiocese of San Bernardino. They have made the decision that they're going to absorb the immigrants that are coming through because the federal government called the bishop's office on Monday and they're gonna be busing these immigrants to our communities and asking us to open our homes and to house them for up to a month. The church will reimburse us for any out-of-pocket expenses and we were told not to talk to anybody about it, especially the media.
-- from the thread Stunning: California Couple Says They Were Asked to House Immigrant Children
Weirdly enough, France is providing haven.
Go figure.
Tell that to the ISIS zealots who are killing Christians for simply being alive. I guess he's right in the sense that once all the Christians are dead, ISIS won't be killing them anymore and there will be peace. Hopelessly naive.
Jerk!
I vote for a new crusade with nerve gas and nukes.
Sorry, Bishops, I think America is too busy helping the Palestinian muslims and Hondurans and Guatemalans and Mexicans and El Salvadorans to concern ourselves with Christians in Iraq or Syria or Egypt or Sudan or Nigeria, etc.
You asked for it, you got it.
No incentive for mr. mulato, they can’t vote demonrat.
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