ISIS

Pope: Clergy in Middle East must be the ‘last among the least’
- Catholic News Service, Vatican
- June 23, 2017
Pope Francis called clergy in the Middle East to “learn to be the last among the least,” and lamented the continued plight of Christians suffering due to persecution. “Let us not forget,” the pope said, that “Christians — it doesn’t matter whether they are Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant — shed their blood as a seal of their witness.”
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‘Roughly half’ of Iraqi, Syrian Christians have fled since 2011
- Catholic News Agency, Global Church
- June 17, 2017
The Christian population of Syria has been halved, from about 2 million since 2011, according to a new report by Christian advocacy groups Open Doors, Served, and Middle East Concern. The report found that between 50 and 80 percent of Christians have fled the countries of Iraq and Syria and that about 35 percent more wish to leave.
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Iraqi martyr remembered in Rome ten years after murder
- Global Church
- June 13, 2017
Rome’s Pontifical Irish College celebrated Holy Trinity Mass in the memory of Father Ragheed Ganni, a former resident. In 2007, the 35-year-old Iraqi priest was shot to death by Islamic militants. Also killed were three subdeacons: Basman Daoud, Ghasan Bidawid and Waheed Isho’a.
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Priest: Time an enemy in search for mass graves of Jews, Roma people
- Catholic News Service, Global Church
- June 12, 2017
“I think they feel happy that their memory will be kept,” Father Patrick Desbois said, speaking about his project of uncovering all the forgotten mass graves of Jews and Roma killed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe. “The cardinal of Paris said to me, ‘The memory of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union is kept in the memory of the poorest people.’ In fact, one guy, he told me, ‘I have more than 1,500 Jews buried in my garden and nobody came back since ’42.'”
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U.S. Catholics join pope in praying for victims of London attacks
- Catholic News Service, Church in the US
- June 6, 2017
The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, joined Pope Francis in expressing sorrow and solidarity with the victims of the latest terrorist attacks in London the night of June 3.
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How ISIS genocide victims still face discrimination in Kurdistan
- Catholic News Agency, Church in the US
- June 6, 2017
After a new report showed that religious minorities in Northern Iraq fled the ISIS onslaught in 2014 into Kurdistan, including 70,000 Christians who took refuge in Erbil, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom urged the government “to take steps to ensure that these communities realize their rights.”
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Pope: Clergy in Middle East must be the ‘last among the least’