{"id":4749,"date":"2006-11-07T09:18:35","date_gmt":"2006-11-07T09:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/christians-in-iraq-the-continuing-story.html"},"modified":"2006-11-07T09:18:35","modified_gmt":"2006-11-07T09:18:35","slug":"christians-in-iraq-the-continuing-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/christians-in-iraq-the-continuing-story.html","title":{"rendered":"Christians in Iraq, the continuing story"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bishop from Kirkuk has another perspective:<\/a><\/p>\n

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\n

Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, has spoken out against a US initiative to Stopp the possible extinction of Christians from the country. The prelate described as \u201cimpossible\u201d American plans to give extra protection to Christians who are now fleeing in droves amid reports of ethnic cleansing. Mgr Sako was responding to an intervention by the US Catholic Bishops\u2019 Conference, which has called on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to give asylum to the persecuted Christians and create a safe haven for them in the country\u2019s Nineveh plains.<\/span><\/p>\n

In an interview with Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), Archbishop Sako said: \u201cThis is impossible. This could create much more tension than relief for Christians.\u201d Speaking from Iraq, he suggested that the initiative could be divisive for the Christian faithful at a time of increasing anti-US sentiment in Iraq. Archbishop Sako explained: \u201cWe have not at all assimilated with the coalition forces. We have nothing to do with them, nor indeed do we have anything to do with the West. We are Christians; we are citizens like everyone else.\u201d He stressed the age-old co-existence and cooperation between the Christian communities and the prevailing Islamic culture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mgr Sako reported that the Christian exodus from the south-eastern city of Basra was so far advanced that with barely 200 families left in the region, the local bishop, Mgr Djibrail Kassab, had left the diocese to take up a new post administering to exiled communities in Sydney, Australia. According to the archbishop, the see in Basra is likely to remain vacant and there is only one priest left at work in the diocese. He said: \u201cIt is almost the case now that there is no future for the Church in so many parts of the country, including Baghdad, Mosul and Basra.\u201d But he described the situation in his archdiocese of Kirkuk as \u201ccalm and quiet.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bishop from Kirkuk has another perspective: Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, has spoken out against a US initiative to Stopp the possible extinction of Christians from the country. The prelate described as \u201cimpossible\u201d American plans to give extra protection to Christians who are now fleeing in droves amid reports of ethnic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nChristians in Iraq, the continuing story - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/11\/christians-in-iraq-the-continuing-story.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christians in Iraq, the continuing story - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A bishop from Kirkuk has another perspective: Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, has spoken out against a US initiative to Stopp the possible extinction of Christians from the country. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4749\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}