This Easter, a Church is being killed
Iraqi archbishop found in shallow grave. End the 'inhuman violence', pleads Pope
By Ed West
21 March 2008

Murdered Archbishop Rahho

Thousands of Christians from across Iraq have attended the funeral of murdered Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho - as the Pope called for an end to the massacres of the beleaguered minority.

The body of the Archbishop of Mosul was discovered near the northern Iraqi city on Thursday last week, almost two weeks after Islamists kidnapped the prelate, who was in poor health.

He was found a day after his kidnappers had called Auxiliary Archbishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad to tell them that 65-year-old Mgr Rahho was very ill. "This morning, they telephoned us to say they had buried him," Fr Warduni said, giving the location of the body.

"We still don't know whether he died from his poor health or was killed. The kidnappers only told us that he was dead."

The cause of death is still unknown, and while a mortuary official in Mosul said there were no bullet holes in his body, the Iraqi authorities are treating it as murder.

Iraqi television station Ishtar later announced that the archbishop's body had been exhumed and transported to a mortuary.

Archbishop Rahho was kidnapped in Mosul on February 29 after he first watched as his driver and two bodyguards were shot dead by the attackers.

The kidnappers had demanded a ransom of £1.5 million and demanded that the country's Christians join the insurgency against American forces.

Pope Benedict XVI and the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, were among many religious leaders who had called for the release of the archbishop.

After reacting with "great sadness" to news of the death, the Pope called it "an act of inhuman violence that offends the dignity of the human being and seriously harms the... coexistence among the beloved Iraqi people".

In a telegram to Cardinal Emmanuel-Karim Delly of Baghdad, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Pope said that after being informed of "the tragic death" of the archbishop, he wanted to let Chaldean Catholics and all Christians in Iraq know that he is close to them.

On Palm Sunday the Pope called on terrorists to "stop the massacres, the violence, the hatred in Iraq", as he addressed a crowd in St Peter's Square. The Holy Father held a memorial Mass the following day.

Bishop Crispian Hollis of Portsmouth, chairman of the Department of International Affairs of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, also paid tribute to Archbishop Rahho in his Easter message.

He said: "The cycle of death and violence, of which Archbishop Rahho was a victim, cannot prevail because we have been created for so much more than death. This is what the death and resurrection of Jesus teach us. But he doesn't just teach us, he invites us, with a brother's love, to die with him and live with him so that his love can come again into our hearts with a power and beauty that no human evil, no culture of death can extinguish."

The archbishop is the highest-ranking Christian cleric to have been killed since the start of the Iraq insurgency in 2003.

Last June Fr Ragheed Ganni and three deacons were murdered in Mosul after driving home from Sunday Mass. Fr Ganni had returned to his native country from Italy after the American invasion, despite being warned of the dangers. "The situation here is worse than hell," Fr Ganni wrote to a former professor the day before he was killed.

Chaldean Catholics are the largest of Iraq's Christian denominations, among the oldest Christian communities in the world. Half of the pre-war population of 1.2 million have fled the country since the US-led invasion, finding themselves victims of Islamic extremists, kidnapping gangs and Kurdish nationalists alike.

In January Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki assured Mgr Francis Assisi Chullikatt, the Vatican's ambassador to Iraq, that the government was committed to the safety of Christians after six bomb attacks on churches on January 6.

"The most absurd and unjustified violence continues to afflict the Iraqi people and in particular the small Christian community whom the Pope ... holds in his prayers ... in this time of deep sadness," said Fr Federico Lombardi, general director of Vatican Radio.

"This tragic event underscored once more and with more urgency the duty of all, and in particular of the international community, to bring peace to a country that has been so tormented."

Mgr Chullikatt said in an interview with Ishtar television that Archbishop Rahho had led a "life of integrity, a life of testimony to the faith that he was living".

"Christians in Iraq will be called upon to follow the same example so that we can continue to live our faith and be promoters of peace and reconciliation in Iraq," he said.

The death of Iraq's second most senior prelate also led to calls from Iraq's Christian diaspora for greater American protection. Eva Shamouel of the Iraqi Christian charity Assyrian Aid Society said: "This kind of atrocity cannot be brushed off as 'a general security problem', as western governments do when we try to campaign for our political and religious freedoms. This is more proof of systematic, calculated and deliberate persecution of Iraqi Christians.

"The Iraqi government needs more support in order to be able to deal with violence and extremism and western governments need to get their heads out of the sand and recognise that what is happening to this community is no less than ethnic cleansing. Our thoughts are with Archbishop Rahho's family and the family of his driver and two guards."

Dr Suha Rassam, spokeswoman for charity Iraqi Christians in Need, said: "Christians will now be even more in fear of their lives from Islamic fundamentalists. The only way for the Church in the Mosul area to survive might be if it goes underground, like it did in the first and second centuries," she said. "This way, Mass and other services would be held in secret and priests go about their duties clandestinely.

"Over the last eight months, attacks on Christians have been escalating. This is not a situation anyone would want, but the Christian population is living each day in terror of being kidnapped or murdered. When the Church is facing persecution of this magnitude, then desperate measures might have to be taken."