Chaldean archbishop kidnapped in Iraq found dead: church

Yahoo News ^ | March 13, 2008

[NYer]

A Chaldean Catholic archbishop kidnapped last month in northern Iraq has been found dead, the information service of the Italian Catholic Church said Thursday.

The body of Paulos Faraj Rahho, the archbishop of Mosul, was found near the northern city, the Church said, quoting the auxiliary archbishop of Baghdad, Shlemon Warduni.

"We recovered his body near Mosul," Warduni said, according to the Church's news agency SIR. "The kidnappers had buried him."

Rahho was kidnapped on February 29 in Mosul after a deadly shootout in which three of his companions were killed.

Iraqi forces in Mosul had fanned out to search for Rahho, whose abduction was branded as "atrocious" by Pope Benedict XVI.

Rahho was the latest in a long line of Chaldean clerics to be abducted in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003. Two priests were kidnapped in the city in October, and last June a priest and three deacons were attacked in front of their church.

Iraq's Christians, with the Chaldean sect by far the largest community, were said to number as many as 800,000 before the 2003 invasion.

Associated with the "Crusader" invaders and regarded as well-off, they are now victims of sectarian cleansing, killings and kidnappings at the hands of both Sunni and Shiite Islamists, as well as criminal gangs.

[LordBridey]

Have you thought it through? Will you be using trains?

[farmer18th]

Before we get to the train stage, good old-fashioned demonizing could be very, very effective. "Demonizing," of course, is too kind a word; it implies that some largely innocent person or creed is being villified. In Islam we have 1400 years of Western-hatred, rape, pillage and rapine to draw on for the proper edification of anyone who really does want to know the story, and whose moral eyes and ears are not blinded by petro-dollars.

Before you resort to quips, next time, consider this: We don't really have a problem with Nazis anymore. We have successfully characterized the swastika, properly, as an emblem of evil. If we merely began, properly, associating the crescent with the collosal cruelty it represents, if we began socially disassociating ourselves with Muslims, and economically, culturally, and physically isolating them (as we have done with Nazis and White Supremicists), they would shrivel up and go away. As it stands now, we are electing these children of the devil to Congress.

[Marysecretary]

Many people are martyred for their faith, still, and it will always be that way.

[Marysecretary]

Wasn’t a Chaldean Christian murdered in New Jersey last year? Or was that a Coptic Christian.

[LordBridey]

We don't really have a problem with Nazis anymore.

I think we do.

[farmer18th]

We don't really have a problem with Nazis anymore.
I think we do.

I agree. You get the Neville Chamberlain role.

[HighlyOpinionated]

[NYer]

THANK YOU!