ACN News - Iraq – ACN gives help as Christians flee persecution

ACN-USA News

12/7/10

Iraq – ACN gives help as Christians flee persecution



Families fleeing persecution in Mosul and Baghdad are to receive emergency aid from leading Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

The charity for oppressed and other suffering Christians has agreed to give grants of $20,000 for victims of the October 31st, massacre at Baghdad’s Our Lady of Salvation Syrian Catholic Church which left up to 58 dead and more than 70 injured.

A further $13,300 will be sent to poverty-stricken Christians from Baghdad who have fled to the Iraqi cities of Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah.

In Zakho Diocese, in the far north of the country, ACN is also giving $33,300 to provide food packages for hundreds of Christian families.

The aid will be distributed by Chaldean Sisters of the Daughters of Mary Immaculate.

ACN’s announcement comes amid reports that 500 Christian families – more than 2,000 people – have fled Baghdad and Mosul in the past few weeks amid continuing violence and intimidation.

On Monday reports emerged that Hekmet Jaboure Samak and his wife, Samira, an elderly Christian couple from Baghdad’s Bealdeyat district, had been killed in their home.

Church sources in Baghdad told ACN that the attackers broke into the home where the couple had been living for many years.

After killing the two Christians, the attackers comprehensively looted their home.

“Everything was taken,” the Church source said.

Speaking from northern Iraq, Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil thanked ACN for its continuing help, saying that Christians were now very afraid.

He said, “The Christians in Baghdad and Mosul do not have a dignified life. They feel afraid even in their own home. They cannot move freely.”

“They have to think twice about going to church on Sundays.”

Archbishop Warda added, “People would leave immediately if they could. The only thing that is stopping them is that in many cases they are poor and if they left they would struggle to find a job, schools for their children and a home to live in.”

The archbishop claimed that estate agents in Baghdad had reduced the value of properties owned by Christians, which would mean that if they tried to sell their homes they would struggle to find decent alternative housing.

Helping Christians in the Middle East is a priority for Aid to the Church in Need.
Pope Benedict XVI recently told the charity to focus on supporting the region’s faithful, where he said “the local Church is threatened in its very existence.”


With picture of Sister Merna with emergency food for Christians in northern Iraq

Editor’s Notes:



Directly under the Holy Father, Aid to the Church in Need supports the faithful wherever they are persecuted, oppressed or in pastoral need.  ACN is a Catholic charity - helping to bring Christ to the world through prayer, information and action.

Founded in 1947 by Father Werenfried van Straaten, whom Pope John Paul II named “An Outstanding Apostle of Charity,” the organization is now at work in over 145 countries throughout the world.

The charity undertakes thousands of projects every year including providing transport for clergy and lay Church workers, construction of church buildings, funding for priests and nuns and help to train seminarians. Since the initiative’s launch in 1979, 43 million Aid to the Church in Need Child’s Bibles have been distributed worldwide.

For more information contact Michael Varenne at michael@churchinneed.org or call 718-609-0939 or fax718-609-0938. Aid to the Church in Need, 725 Leonard Street, PO Box 220384, Brooklyn, NY 11222-0384. www.churchinneed.org