Monthly Archives: August 2017

By Rudaw Kurdistan Region President Masoud Barzani addressing a gathering of minority groups in Erbil on Tuesday. Photo: Hemin Hawrami/Twitter ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – An independent Kurdistan state will be for all the people who call this land home, working in partnership together, Kurdistan Region President…

Leaders of the thriving Chaldean community in San Diego’s East County will be on hand for a speacial Chaldean Culture & Traditions celebration at Cuyamaca College on Monday, Aug. 28. The event is sponsored by the Cuyamaca College student Affairs Office and the Associated Students of Cuyamaca College starts at 2:00 p.m. on the…

By Andrew Doran Statue of Mary used as target practice, Batnaya, Nineveh Plain, Iraq. Two summers ago, the Nineveh Plain lay in ruin, divided by a trench that stretched hundreds of miles across Northern Iraq, through the heartland of what remained of…

DAMASCUS (Agos) — Syrian democratic forces liberated a group of Armenians from ISIS in Raqqa on August 8, Agos reports. Saws Karabedyan, one of the liberated women, told Ara News that the ISIS terrorists forced them to wear headscarves.…

Destroyed homes in Qaraqosh ©.Jaco Klamer ACN By: Murcadha O Flaherty and John Pontifex Within just one month, up to 15,000 displaced Iraqi Christians are expected to return to the town in the ancient Nineveh Plains which suffered the worst violence carried out by Daesh (ISIS). The return of an expected 3,000 families to Qaraqosh…

By Murcadha O Flaherty and John Pontifex WITHIN just one month up to 15,000 displaced Iraqi Christians are expected to return to the town in the ancient Nineveh Plains which suffered the worst violence carried out by Daesh (ISIS). The return of an expected 3,000 families to Qaraqosh comes amid growing concern…

Claire Giangravè EDITORIAL_ASSISTANT Orthodox leader calls Moscow and Rome to support persecuted Christians Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk (Grigory Alfeyev), is awarded the Order of Honour by Putin on September 22, 2016, at the Kremlin, Moscow. (Credit: President Vlidimir…

Lorraine Caballero Western countries have not only abandoned but also betrayed persecuted Christian minorities in the Middle East, according to Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan. (REUTERS / Omar Sanadiki)An Assyrian woman attends a mass in solidarity with the…

?????? ???????? TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An Iranian Assyrian Christian lawmaker denounced an annual report by the US government on religious freedom in Iran for its falsification of facts, saying religious minorities in Iran are treated with much more respect than those in the US.…

By Afp Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II (L) stands behind Hasakeh’s newly appointed Bishop Maurice Amseeh during his inauguration at the Saint George Cathedral in Hasakeh on August 19, 2017 Syriac Orthodox Christians in Syria’s northeastern city of Hasakeh celebrated the…

August 19, 2017 Special to Ankawa.com The Kurdistan Democratic Party has been pressing administrators in the villages and towns in Nineveh plateau to sign petitions demanding the inclusion of their areas in the Kurdish independence referendum, sources told ankawa.com…

AFP | HASSAKE, Syria: Orthodox Christians in Syria’s northeastern city of Hasakah celebrated the inauguration of the community’s new bishop on Saturday, four years after the last one left the country. Six years of conflict have ravaged Syria and displaced more than half of its population,…

By A.C. Robinson Abdulahad Afram Sawa meeting Pope Benedict. Photo: Courtesy of Abdulahad Afram Sawa Abdulahad Afram Sawa, 69, General Secretary of the Chaldean Democratic Party in Kurdistan and twice a former Iraqi MP sat down with Rudaw on Tuesday to discuss the…

Habib Jajou, the archbishop of Basra, tells MEE more must be done to promote tolerance in a country where many are ‘brainwashed’ by IS An Iraqi stands guard over a church in northern Iraq (AFP) Abigail Frymann Rouch’s picture…

ruth-gledhill Ruth Gledhill Editor But now the ‘n’ symbol has a new purpose, the Bible Society reports. Iraqi women in Jordan are earning their living by embroidering bookmarks with the letter, pronounced ‘noon’. Unable to find any other work because they are Iraqi not Jordanian, they are then able…

• People still dependent on emergency help By Murcadha O Flaherty PARTS of Aleppo are coming back to life with people returning in large numbers to the bomb-blasted city and streets once again humming with traffic and people.…

By Denis Grasska, Catholic News Service Syriac Catholic Archbishop Yousif Abba of Baghdad, Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan and Bishop Yousif Habash of Our Lady of Deliverance Syriac Catholic Epachy are seen July 24 at Our Mother of Perpetual Help Syriac Catholic…

By: Robert Ewan About 350 Chaldean Youth attended the third European Chaldean Youth Conference which took place from 7 to 12 August 2017 at Untermashtal monastery, 80 kilometers from Stuttgart, Germany. The slogan of the conference was “come and see” based on John 1:39. It was attended by the Chaldean Patriarch Louise I Sako and…

Christian militia Mark Chamoun The threat of ISIS and current crises in the region led to the emergence of several Christian militia groups in Syria and Iraq, but what are these groups exactly? The plight of Christians in the Middle East has been one made up of ongoing violence,…

Lorraine Caballero More than 600 Christian families are making their way back to the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq to rebuild their lives from scratch, the Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul told Christian charity Aid to the Church in Need. (REUTERS / Alaa Al-Marjani)A priest puts cross on the street of Qaraqosh, near Mosul,…