When we think of Iraq, we tend to think of a Muslim country. Of course, that is not incorrect: close to 98% of the population of Iraq identify with Islam. But did you know that Iraq is also home to one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world?
In fact, many of the Christians in Iraq speak the same language that Jesus did, Aramaic. So, when they say the ‘Our Father’ they are praying it exactly as Christ taught it to his followers almost 2,000 years ago.
It was the apostle St Thomas – ‘doubting Thomas’ – who first brought Christianity to Iraq in the first century. Like everyone else in the region, Christians have suffered the ups and downs of history and geopolitics.
After the 2003 US-led invasion, violence against the community rose as sectarian tension rose, with reports of abduction, torture, bombings and killings. Church leaders report that the number of Christians has dropped from a pre-2003 estimate of around 1.5 million to fewer than 250,000.
But the Christians faced their greatest trial ever 10 years ago this month as a fleet of Toyota trucks carrying Islamic State militants rolled into their ancient hometowns declaring a caliphate, a trans-national empire where everyone would be subject to a rigid interpretation of Islamic law.
Within hours, 100,000 Christians had to flee for their lives carrying only what possessions that they could hastily arrange in a rucksack and their deep and profound faith.
They quite literally walked their very own ‘Way of the Cross’. In Kurdistan, they were at least safe – but most of them now had nothing to their name, while the homes, churches, schools and livelihoods they had left behind were destroyed by Isis.
This is where Aid to the Church in Need, the organisation that I now lead, came in. ACN was the first international organisation to go to their assistance. Over the following years, thanks to our generous benefactors, we helped first to secure the basic needs of the displaced, then housing, and finally the rebuilding of their homes, so that those who wished to return to their towns and villages could do so, once Islamic State had been pushed back.
I have visited Iraq often over the years, and I have seen first-hand the desperate suffering and displacement of people who once lived lives not unlike our own. They went to the cinema, the shopping centre and to football matches. In a matter of hours they were like refugees in their own country – treated like outsiders by an invading army.
Many feared that the invasion of their homelands would drive Christians from Iraq for good, but a decade later, the militants of Islamic State are no more, and I am happy to report that thousands of Christians have returned home.
Aid to the Church in Need has been able to rebuild houses in the Nineveh Plains, meaning thousands of families can return. But a true home is more than a house, and many churches and schools have also been rebuilt to give the community a sense of focus and a sense of hope.
Pope Francis was acutely aware of the deep suffering of all Iraqis, but especially the tiny Christian minority. One of the reasons that the Catholic Church is so attuned to geopolitics and the thoughts and words of the Pope on issues so closely followed, is the fact that more than any government or the United Nations, the Church is present in almost every community in the world. Following the Isis invasion, the Pope was able to hear daily reports from the bishops, priests and religious sisters who had fled with their people and were ministering to them in displacement camps.
But Pope Francis is not a man who is content to monitor suffering from a distance. As a pastor, he always wants to be with people in their suffering. And after Isis was pushed back, he was keen to go to Iraq as soon as he could to see the rebuilding and give fresh heart to the Christians there.
The people here are like olive trees. You can cut them, burn them, but after 10 or 20 years they will continue to give fruit. Isis tried everything, but we remain, and as a Church we do everything to give a sign of hope
— Dr Nizar Semaan, Syriac Catholic archbishop in Northern Iraq
For a time, it looked like the Covid-19 pandemic would scupper the Holy Father’s chance to go to Iraq. But the arrival of vaccines, heralded fresh hope of a longed-for papal visit for the people of Iraq.
When the Pope was eventually able to go in March 2021, I was honoured that he asked me to travel with him aboard the papal plane that journalists dub ‘Shepherd One’ as a representative of the Catholic agencies that helped in the rebuilding of northern Iraq.
As we landed in Baghdad International Airport in the early afternoon sunshine, the co-pilots opened the cockpit windows and unfurled the flag of Iraq and the Vatican flag. A few minutes later, I accompanied Francis as he became the first Pope in history to set foot in the ancient land of Abraham – the patriarch revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims and a powerful symbol for interreligious dialogue.
As we met Christian families who had returned to their homes, their relief was palpable – but also their joy that the Pope had come to be with them at a difficult moment in history, not unlike when Pope St John Paul II came to Ireland in 1979.
Iraqi Christians continue to face many challenges, but they are hopeful and buoyed by their faith. “Words cannot describe what we experienced 10 years ago, Isis tried to eradicate us, but they failed,” Dr Nizar Semaan, the Syriac Catholic archbishop in Northern Iraq told me recently.
He used an image that will be familiar to anyone who has been to the Middle East: “The people here are like olive trees. You can cut them, burn them, but after 10 or 20 years they will continue to give fruit.”
“They tried everything, but we remain, and as a Church we do everything to give a sign of hope”, he said.
While outright violence has receded in Iraq, Christians in Iraq are still fighting to get the same recognition and rights as other Iraqi citizens, and the current threat of a regional conflict involving Israel and Lebanon has the community on edge. In these situations, they often become targets for fundamentalists or collateral damage in the wars of others.
Their future is by no means certain, but for now – 10 years after the Isis invasion – they are rebuilding their lives in their ancient homelands.
