Iraqis' Experiences Recall 'What it Means to Live As a Christian'

Catholic News Agency ^ | 2/1/17 | Hannah Brockhaus

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Rome, Italy, Feb 1, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An Iraqi priest who was forced to flee his village when the Islamic State seized the area in 2014 said the hardship and persecution Christians in Iraq have experienced has taught them what it really means to fully live out their faith.

“What we have witnessed is a message for us, so we may reconsider what the objectives of being Christian should be, what it means to live as a Christian to the fullest, not through empty words, and not as something that can be carried away by the wind,” Fr. Karam Shamasha told CNA.

Fr. Shamasha is from Telskuf, a town on the Nineveh plain 10 miles south of Alqosh. At one time there were more than 120,000 Christians there, he said: “In my village everybody was Christian. There was no other religion.”

As a parish priest in the Chaldean Diocese of Alqosh, Fr. Shamasha served some 1,500 Christian families before the Iraq War started.

But since 2003 the community has experienced continuous hardship, and even persecution, he said. The Islamic State burned down many of their churches and killed many priests, and many laity as well.

But in 2014, when Islamic State took over the city of Mosul, the situation on the plain of Nineveh became even worse: “It all started when the extremists came out into the open. Up till then they had existed as an extreme mentality but it was never out in the open, always clandestine,” Fr. Shamasha explained.

When the Islamic State consolidated control of Mosul between June and August 2014, he continued, they gave the Christians three options: convert to Islam; pay the jizya tax which would grant them life but not the possibility to practice their faith; or be killed.

“You must.......

[House Atreides]

Pope Francis could learn something from these Christians; but he won’t.

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