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By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
*Rome
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Four Chaldean Catholics from Iraq met the press this afternoon on the margins of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, and their cri de couer to the outside world was perhaps best expressed by Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad.
“Take our wealth,” Warduni said, “but leave us in peace.”
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*Rome
*
Four Chaldean Catholics from Iraq met the press this afternoon on the margins of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, and their cri de couer to the outside world was perhaps best expressed by Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad.
“Take our wealth,” Warduni said, “but leave us in peace.”
Code:
Though Christians are disappearing in many parts of the Middle East, nowhere has the decimation been as dramatic as Iraq. Conventionally it’s said that Iraq has lost half its Christian population since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. In fact, however, the Iraqis this afternoon said the situation is even worse.
Anan Lewis, a lay woman who works with Chaldean church in Iraq, said that before the first Gulf War in 1991, there were at least 1.5 million Christians in the country. Today the total is somewhere between 400,000 and a half million, meaning that Iraq has lost more than two-thirds of its Christian population in the span of just two decades.More…