The Tablet

The Tablet



Church in the World
22 March 2008

Anguished’ Pope in Iraq peace plea

Robert Mickens in Rome and Michael Hirst

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Pope Benedict XVI made what he described as a "forceful and anguished cry" for peace in Iraq this week following the death while in the hands of kidnappers of one of the country's leading prelates, Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho.

"Enough of the massacres, enough of the violence, enough of the hatred in Iraq!" the Pope said during his Angelus reflections after the Palm Sunday Mass in St Peter's Square. The 65-year-old archbishop's lifeless body was found on 13 March, nearly two weeks after unknown captors abducted him and just a week before the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Pope Benedict said that over "the past five years" the Iraqi people have had to "bear the consequences of a war that caused the disintegration of their civil and social life".

The next day the Pope presided at a Mass for the archbishop in his private chapel at the Vatican, which was attended by some members of the Iraqi Christian community in Rome. "We have entered into Holy Week carrying in our hearts great sorrow for the tragic death of our dear Mgr Paulos Faraj Rahho, Archbishop of Mosul of the Chaldeans," the Pope said. He called the archbishop a "man of peace and dialogue" who, "despite numerous threats", did not want to abandon his people.

During the Eucharistic Prayer, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican's top official for interreligious dialogue, referred to the archbishop as a martyr.

At the weekend the head of the Vatican office for Eastern Churches, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, said the Iraqi archbishop's death was another sign that "Christians in Iraq risked disappearing". The sentiment was echoed by the head of the world's largest Chaldean parish. Asked whether he thought there was a religious cleansing campaign against Christians in Iraq, Fr Emmanuel Shaleta, parish priest of St George's Chaldean Catholic Church in Michigan, said: "I think there is. There are certain extremists who want to drive the Christians away from Iraq."

"Almost all the Chaldean priests that we know have been threatened with messages and letters," he told the BBC World Service.

"Christians are particularly at risk because they're seen in some way as linked to Western governments," said Canon Andrew White, the Anglican vicar of Baghdad. He said 58 of his own parishioners had been killed in the past year. "Christians are now terrified, and this sad news will simply speed up the rate of emigration, which in turn could cause Christianity to be extinguished from the country," said John Pontifex, of the UK-based charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

And speaking after the funeral in an interview with ACN, Bishop Andreas Abouna of Baghdad said: "We believe that Archbishop Rahho is a martyr and that was the feeling of the people who were at the funeral."

However, there was also the suggestion that the abduction of the archbishop was the work of criminals. The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said the kidnapping was the work of a criminal gang intent on provoking religious strife, and expressed his support for Iraq's small Christian community.

As The Tablet went to press it was unclear whether the archbishop had been murdered or had died while being held by his abductors. Initial reports suggested that by the time his body was discovered he had been dead for several days. If true, this would show the kidnappers' US$3 million ransom demands for his release continued after his death. There were no obvious marks on the body to suggest physical torture and Archbishop Rahho had a serious heart condition.

US President George W. Bush condemned what he called a savage and cruel act of terrorism. The Muslim Scholars' Association, a powerful Sunni group in Iraq, said that the kidnapping of the archbishop was "a crime intending to divide Iraqis and tear apart their social fabric. The Christian religion is part of the Iraqi people's faith."

Speaking in Qatar, Aref Ali Nayed, interfaith adviser to the Cambridge Interfaith Programme and one of the 138 Muslim scholars who signed a letter addressed first to the Pope inviting more Christian-Muslim dialogue, offered his condolences to the Christian community in Iraq and said Muslims in the region were shocked that insurgents were systematically targeting religious leaders.

The archbishop's funeral on Friday last week took place about 10 miles east of Mosul in the village of Karmles, where more than 2,000 people attended. Presiding was Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of Baghdad