UN’s Holy See Mission remembers Iraqi church attack victims

(November 13, 2010) The Holy See’s mission at the United Nations in New York organized a special service on Thursday to remember the dead and injured in the Oct. 31 terrorist attack on a Catholic Church in Bagdad, Iraq. The Holy See's Mission, in conjunction with the Syriac Catholic Diocese of Our Lady of Deliverance and the Archdiocese of New York, organized the event in New York City's Church of the Holy Family on behalf of the 58 victims who died in the attack, and the more than 100 who were left wounded in the Syriac Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Deliverance. Ambassadors and diplomats had been invited to the event. "We all are saddened to hear of places of worship being attacked," the Holy See’s Permanent Obeserver to the UN, Indian Archbishop Francis Chullikatt told the gathering. The Archbishop had bee the apostolic nuncio to Iraq and Jordan for the last four years until arriving in New York two months ago to assume his new post at the United Nations. "We are especially outraged by these heinous acts when they are perpetrated for the sake of eradicating a religion from a particular place in God’s creation, when our brothers and sisters are killed just because of their faith,” Archbishop Chullikatt said. “That is never the way to spread faith in God,” he added.