A year after Pope Francis’s historic visit, Iraq’s Christians face new threats

There can’t be many priests who celebrate mass in an empty church. But the Archbishop of Mosul, Mgr Najeeb Michaeel, has little choice. Most of his flock have fled persecution, and a handful who remain are thinking about a new life overseas.

Before Islamic State fighters swept across the Nineveh plains, Mosul was home to 2,500 Chaldean and Syriac families.

The war shattered city has been liberated, but fewer than 50 families are left.

“Four or five people will attend mass if I’m lucky, but on some Sundays recently no one turned up, said the Archbishop.

He added: “But even when the church is empty, I still celebrate mass. Not for my benefit – for the people of Mosul.”

St Paul’s church was on Pope Francis’s pilgrimage route, one of dozens of ransacked and desecrated by Islamic State fighters. The rebuilt church is where I sat down with the Archbishop over a glass of sweet tea to discuss what the papal visit in March last year had achieved.

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Earlier Iraqi Christians in Baghdad told me although the Pope’s groundbreaking trip had given them hope and had turned world attention to their plight, their lives had not improved in the last twelve months. For many, life had become even more of a challenge.

‘Look, the Pope is not a magician,” said the Archbishop, “he can’t wave a magic stick, and everything will be alright again, of course not.”

“But in Mosul, I can tell you there’s been one major change since the Pope came here.”

“The tone of the language in mosques has softened – more or less overnight.”

“The both Sunni and Shia mullahs now talk with an open mind, and we hear words of love and peace on the streets. We feel we are all brothers. And that’s the Pope’s legacy.”

Najeeb condemned corrupt local government, which he said had spent vast amounts on rebuilding roads but nothing on reconstructing Christian houses so families could return.

He added: “What Iraq needs is a revolution to get rid of the corrupt politicians. It needs a single leader who can unite the whole country.”

Although Mosul families regularly pack up and leave for Europe, the States and Australia, Archbishop Najeeb, whose predecessor was kidnapped and murdered by Al Qaeda in 2008, remains stubbornly optimistic Christianity will survive here, albeit driven to the very edge of extinction.

“Only this week a family decided on a new life in Germany, but despite everything, I manage to stay optimistic,” he said.

In a Mosul school, I found an example of the new mood of tolerance generated by the Pope’s visit. The US-backed charity HHRO is sponsoring a scheme for children aged six to twelve to teach them acceptance of other religions.

Instructor Yousra, a Sunni Muslim, said: “We miss our Christian neighbours. We went to school with them; we worked alongside them, we want them to come back.”

But despite a reduction in religious tensions, for which the Pope was clearly a catalyst after his meeting with the leader of Iraq’s Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani when travelling around Mosul and nearby towns like Qarakosh and Bartella, you discover Christians are now facing fresh and major threats to their existence.

The Iraqi military has commandeered their lands without compensation. Sunni or Shia Muslim families have intensified their claims under legal rights granted in the Saddam era to seize Christian properties and move in. Many Christian homes have been bought and sold several times, so absent families cannot prove their ownership.

Meanwhile, Christian farmers, with no other income than from what the land yields, are suffering hugely due to climate change. Ninevah was once Iraq’s bread basket but late rainy seasons in the last two years and blistering summers caused wheat and barley crops to fail.

The International Red Cross recently said the region could be a dust bowl by 2050.

Standing in the courtyard of the St Mary Al Tahira church in Qaraqosh, the head of the NGO, Nineveh Relief, Yohanna Yousef Towaya, told me: “Before the jihadis came, you couldn’t get into mass it was so full. Now there’s only a 100 or so worshippers.”

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“The Pope gave us hope, but we’re now fearful Christians are losing their optimism because of new threats, and the Iraqi government isn’t helping in any way. People are leaving because there are no jobs, no stability and no security.”

In Baghdad, both the US Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory D. LoGerfo and Baghdad Operations Commander Lieutenant-General Ahmed Salim told me the Iraqi Army was dedicated to protecting the right of all to practice their faith and live in peace.

But in reality, security in Mosul and the Ninevah Plains lies in the hands of roaming, rag-tag militias who switch sides depending on which community stumps up the most money.

In a side alley in Qaraqosh, I encountered members of the Babylon Brigade whose leader Rayaan Al-Kaidani once sliced the ear off a detained prisoner prompting Washington to sanction him for committing: “grave human rights violations.”

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The movement has been disowned by the Chaldean Church and yet there they were still operating freely in a town of 25,000.

Looking for straws in the wind as to the future of Christianity in Iraq, I met with Bassam Shito, who runs a US-government funded NGO called the Safe Return Centre.

Shito helps Christian families re-establish their lives with new identity cards, but he also addressed darker issues such as getting psychiatric help for women who were seized as sex slaves and raped and also counselling for anyone who was left traumatised at the hands of the jihadis

Under President Trump, Safe Return was well funded, but the Biden administration has told it and other similar NGOs there’ll be no more American money from July this year. No reason was given.

Could it be that even Washington believes that after 2000 years, Christianity in Iraq is a lost cause – that US tax dollars could be better spent elsewhere?

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