Posted on 09/10/2022 6:01:32 PM PDT by marshmallow
With 1,500 participants registering in eight days, and 200 that were added in subsequent days, this year’s Ankawa Youth Meeting was the biggest of its type since the initiative began in 2013.
ZENIT News / Erbil, 05.09.2022).- More than 1,700 young people from all over Iraq gathered for the biggest Christian Youth Festival of its type in the country.
The three-day event began on Thursday, September 1, and was attended by young people from such distant places as Zakho, in the far North, to Basra in the Southeast to Sulaymaniyah near Iraq’s Eastern border.
Father Dankha Joola, organizer of the event, said to ACN that the event is essential for the Church’s recovery, after Daesh’s (ISIS’) occupation in Iraq (2014-16), during which Christians, Yazidis and other minorities suffered genocidal violence. “By gathering in such large numbers, we’ll be able to say: ‘We are here, we exist, we have a role to play in this country,’ and that’s very important when one thinks of how much we have suffered over the last years. And I want to thank all in ACN for helping to carry out the event because, by supporting it, they are encouraging people to stay here and to witness our faith. Yes, we have problems in our country; yes, we have conflict, but we have Jesus Christ. We have a unique culture that we want to keep alive.”
AYM began with a choral service, which included ancient hymns, and ended with a Mass in which Archbishop Mitja Leskovar, Apostolic Nuncio in Iraq, delivered the homily.
(Excerpt) Read more at zenit.org ...
This is a much more inspiring gathering than that Synodal thing in Germany. God bless these young people!
It matters not if one is Catholic or Protestant, the church needs youth to take our place when we are gone.
And that usually starts when being introduced to Christ as a child or teen.
Many kids in the West go to church only by being included in family functions which include church.
In Iraq and many, many other foreign countries, the youth go because they want to.
Revival is coming throughout the world one God deals with these wicked Leaders everywhere.
Lot of irony here.
🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻 God protect them and all Christians in Muslum hands.
I’m surprised this is legal in Iraq.
Wonderful news
God Bless Them!
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