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Friday, October 28

"By your Spirit I will rise from the ashes of defeat"

... “This is Christian Iraq” Facebook page posted a video of two priests and members of the Iraq military elevating a cross made of two wooden poles and copper wiring on top of Al-Tahira Church ...


AMN, October 27: An emotional video has appeared of a girl, said to be Assyrian, expressing her thanks to the Iraqi army for ridding ISIS from her village.




The ‘people of the cross’ are taking back Iraq
By Mary Rezac 
October 26, 2016
Catholic News Agency Blog

[Visit the website for videos mentioned in the report] 


The cross of Jesus is being lifted once more over many parts of Iraq, where for years Islamic State terrorists left a path of death and destruction.

As a military campaign to rid the Mosul area of the Islamic state rages on, videos are surfacing of “the people of the cross” reclaiming their homes by raising makeshift wooden crosses over the churches and towns they were once forced to flee out of fear for their lives.

The “people of the cross” was the term for Christians used by Islamic terrorists when they beheaded 21 Egyptian Christians in February 2015.

According to many reports, the Islamic State has a special hate for the symbol of the cross, which many say points to the religious motivations of their actions. 

According to a journalist for Ankawa news agency, within two weeks of seizing Mosul, the Islamic State terrorists threw down all the crosses from domes of churches in the city. They also raided the houses of Christian living in Mosul in order to destroy all the crosses and icons.

The breaking of the cross is symbolic of what many Muslims believe will happen at the end times. Muhammad prophesied that when Isa (the Muslim Jesus) returns, he will “fight the people for the cause of Islam. He will break the cross, kill the swine and abolish jizya” and establish the rule of Allah throughout the world.

But after years of broken crosses throughout Christian towns near Mosul, Iraq, the symbol of Jesus’ triumph over death is returning.

Yesterday, “This is Christian Iraq” Facebook page posted a video of two priests and members of the Iraq military elevating a cross made of two wooden poles and copper wiring on top of Al-Tahira Church in Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian town.

Al-Tahira Church (The Church of the Immaculate Conception) is a Chaldean Catholic Church dating back to the 7th century. In 2014, some sources reported that ISIS terrorists destroyed a Virgin Mary statue outside this Church. Since then, most of the other icons and sacramentals inside the church have been destroyed, the interior of the Church burned, the windows smashed.

But now, there is hope again that the 50,000 some Christians who were forced to leave Qaraqosh may return.

“I’m very happy now that we are able to return to our church,” Father Amar, one of the priests who erected the new cross, told The Daily Beast.

But hope mingles with sorrow at the ruin of so many churches and Christian symbols.

“It's very hard for us to see our town like this. Everything is damaged. Do you see that the bell of the church is missing? They destroyed it. Why? I don’t know,” he said.

A second video, from France 24, shows the liberation of Bartella, a Christian village close to Mosul. In an emotional and symbolic gesture of their return, they too made a makeshift cross of wooden beams and raised it on top of their church.

[...]


"By your Spirit I will rise from the ashes of defeat" 



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2 comments:

bdoran said...

See here IDC/In Defense of Christians.

http://indefenseofchristians.org/

They had a lot to do along with the Knights of Columbus [!] getting ISIS declared genocidal. Real Deal.

[BTW the Knights of Columbus doing that is like hearing the Rotarian's parachuted into combat but maybe that's a Catholic joke].

Pundita said...

Thanks for that information.