Kurdistan elections: Christian parties want ‘real needs’ of minority to be heard

The site of Mar Elia Church in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan region, where hundreds of Christians camped, displaced by Islamic State. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)
The Christian minority in Iraqi Kurdistan is hoping for its “real” representatives to be voted into the Kurdish regional parliament this Sunday, 30 September, reports Kurdish news service Rudaw. The presidential and parliamentary elections in the semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq are the first after a referendum last year in . . . Read More

Iraqi archbishop tells USAID delegation to hurry up aid delivery

Iraqi archbishop tells USAID delegation to hurry up aid delivery
An Iraqi Catholic archbishop has said he and other bishops are “delighted” that the US aid arm is to make good on a pledge to send aid directly to non-Muslim communities recovering from ISIS’s occupation of their towns and villages, but warned “time is running [out]”. Archbishop Bashar Warda of . . . Read More

Chaldean Patriarch congratulates surprise Iraqi election winner

Chaldean Patriarch congratulates surprise Iraqi election winner
The Chaldean Patriarch, Louis Sako, has telephoned Iraqi Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr to congratulate him on his unexpected victory in the country’s recent parliamentary elections. The Patriarchate also said that Sako told Sadr he hoped for a government that promotes the common good of all the Iraqi people. According to . . . Read More

Iraqi archbishop nominated for 2018 Nobel Peace Prize

Iraqi archbishop nominated for 2018 Nobel Peace Prize
Archbishop Louis Raphaël I Sako, the head of the Iraq-based Chaldean Church, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, has been nominated for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, reports Asia News. Following his nomination, the archbishop said receiving the prize “would be an important and significant gesture, because it would . . . Read More

Trump’s migrant policy ‘a trap for Christians’

US President Donald Trump’s fast-tracking of Christian refugees from the Middle East will be “a trap,” according to Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, Primate of the Eastern Catholic Church. “Every reception policy that discriminates the persecuted and suffering on religious grounds ultimately harms the Christians of the East,” he . . . Read More

Iraqis who fled Mosul and IS flee Turkish bombing

The Turkish air force has bombed the Assyro-Chaldean Christian village of Upper Sharanish in northern Iraq. Condemning what he called the “unjust act”, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako urged Ankara to “respect the lives and properties of the inhabitants and not to displace them under the pretext of fighting” the Kurdish . . . Read More