Fighting to survive as a church

On August 23rd, the patriarchs of the four ancient churches of Northern Iraq gathered for a unique and historic joint service in a church in Dahuk, the major town in the area of Kurdistan to which most of the estimated 670,000 newly displaced have fled, including thousands of Christians. In a rare demonstration of unity, the four patriarchs fielded questions from the audience: five displaced Christians had been selected to address the church leadership, and they used the occasion to vent their anger, frustration and despair, but also to call for concrete solutions to their dilemma of now living away from their ancient homeland, seemingly without any hope of ever returning.
In a unique display of resolve, but also despair, the patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Aphrem the Second, called on the Christians to defend themselves once Islamic State is defeated and the Christians are allowed to return to their ancient homeland on the Nineveh Plain.
The pain and agony was felt in every word that evening!

Kim Hartzner, MD, Managing Director

18 / 21

……So don’t tell us we are not working for you. It is not the church’s business to work in politics, but now we have started to work in this for you because we saw that nothing useful came out of the political parties. So today we inserted ourselves into politics for you. Because the parties and the others they failed. When we saw they failed we worked with the parties to protect you, and now in two weeks we will visit Washington five or six patriarchs from the East, go and present what we want to the United States. But the world is not interested in us, the world is interested in themselves. You have to know that we are alone, and that we ourselves need to do as much as we can ourselves.
I cannot say when you can return to your villages. It could be four week, two months or three months, I don’t know. I cannot lie to you and say this will happen tomorrow. And we don’t have immediate solutions. When you will go back to your homes you will not find them the same way in which you left them. Things will be destroyed, stolen. The church do as much as they can and the bishops cannot afford anything. We can’t let the people stay in the camps or in the streets. Also we thank God that here the church have buildings on their hands, but also if many people stay together diseases will break out because there is not enough air. The bishops are here and they will find solutions now, and I will start with bishop David, with whom I discussed today what we can do. Maybe we can find trailers for several people to stay together, we don’t know yet what we can do. We work together, we will work together for that.”

vlcsnap 2014 15h54m24s130