On June 3 2007, an armed group gunned down and killed Fr Ragheed Ganni and three of his aides. The murder took place right after Sunday mass in front of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul, Iraq where Father Ragheed was parish priest. Sources said that hours later the bodies were still lying in the street because no one dared retrieve them. Given the situation tensions in the area remain high.
Mosul is the capital of Nineveh province, and has been home to Christians of the Assyrian, Chaldean, Armenian and Catholic churches for more than millennium. Now they are being driven out en masse.
Father Ragheed himself had been targeted several times in previous attacks. The Church of the Holy Spirit has also been repeatedly attacked and bombed in the last few years, the last time occurred but a few months ago.
Father Ganni had studied in Italy and was fluent in Arabic as well as Italian, French and English. In 2005 he had visited Italy where he gave testimony during the Vigil to Eucharistic Congress in Bari.
Fr. Ragheed was born in Mosul in 1972. In 1993, he received his Civil Engineering degree from University of Mosul. He commenced his studies for priesthood at the Pontifical Irish College, Rome, in October 1996, where he studied for four years. Fr Ragheed was well known to many people in Ireland and spent his summers working at the pilgrimage site of Lough Derg, in the Diocese of Clogher. His murder was widely reported in the Irish and British media.
