Offer Lenten prayer, fasting so that Christians may stay in Iraq: Patriarch

Iraq, 25 February 2014: The head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Holy See, has asked the faithful to pray and fast in Lent “that Iraqi Christians will remain here in our country and not emigrate.”

“Our Christian identity has been part of Iraq’s history and geography for two thousand years,” Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako continued. “Our deepest roots and our clearest sources are here in this our country, if we leave, we would be uprooted, cut off from our origins.”

According to a Fides news agency report, he added that “we Christians are here because God wanted us here and with his grace, here we will remain to build bridges with our Muslim brothers and sisters and to work together with them for the development of our nation.”
Source: CWN