The only Anglican priest in Iraq comes to Guildford

From England-

Faez Jirjees, Vicar of St George's in Baghdad, visited Guildford on his first trip to the UK for seven years to speak about the plight of Christians in Iraq and his work bringing peace to the country.

Rev Faez Jirjees is, by any measure, a brave man.

As the vicar of St George's, Baghdad, he is Iraq's only Anglican priest and a member of a dwindling Christian minority that faces discrimination, persecution and violence.

"Any speech that I give that they didn't like, that could turn to violence or threats," he told SurreyLive on a recent visit to Guildford , his first trip to the UK in seven years, where he is spreading the word about the plight of Iraqi Christians and the need for secular government if there is to be peace in the country after 16 years of war. 

"They" turns out to be a wide array of groups who might take exception to a Christian priest calling for a secular state in Iraq.

More here-

https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/only-anglican-priest-iraq-comes-17020033

Only Anglican priest in Iraq says a secular government would improve life for Christians

From Premier-

Iraq's first ordained Anglican vicar tells Premier he never doubts that God is good because evil is done "through what our hands do".

There are nearly 20,000 ordained ministers in the Church of England; in Iraq there is just one.
That one Anglican vicar is Rev Faez Jirjees, who, aged 53, is the parish priest at St George's Church in Baghdad where Canon Andrew White used to work.

Christians make up about one per cent of the population in Iraq but many of them fled when Islamic State (IS) were at their most brutal.

Despite being bombed several times, St George's Church in the capital has, for a long time, bucked the trend by being a hub for interfaith relations, providing healthcare to Christians, as well as Shia and Sunni Muslims through its clinic, dentist's, pharmacy and laboratories.

More here-

https://www.premier.org.uk/News/World/Only-Anglican-priest-in-Iraq-says-a-secular-government-would-improve-life-for-Christians

The Impossible Future of Christians in the Middle East

From The Atlantic-

The call came in 2014, shortly after Easter. Four years earlier, Catrin Almako’s family had applied for special visas to the United States. Catrin’s husband, Evan, had cut hair for the U.S. military during the early years of its occupation of Iraq. Now a staffer from the International Organization for Migration was on the phone. “Are you ready?” he asked. The family had been assigned a departure date just a few weeks away.  

“I was so confused,” Catrin told me recently. During the years they had waited for their visas, Catrin and Evan had debated whether they actually wanted to leave Iraq. Both of them had grown up in Karamles, a small town in the historic heart of Iraqi Christianity, the Nineveh Plain. Evan owned a barbershop near a church. Catrin loved her kitchen, where she spent her days making pastries filled with nuts and dates. Their families lived there: her five siblings and aging parents, his two brothers.

More here-

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/05/iraqi-christians-nineveh-plain/589819/?fbclid=IwAR2cinVSB9rsc54xQRgRhqS_yoJTMPtxewq2wFNdHr2x4hSGoXSWtGxX2xU

Iraq's leader hails peace efforts of Anglican church

From La Croix-

Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi was treated to a guided tour of St. George's Anglican church in Baghdad on Feb. 4 and briefed on the Communion's philanthropic and peace-building initiatives in the country.

Anglican Father Faiz Jerjes, the parish priest, conducted the tour and was praised by the nation's newly installed leader, who rose to the post last October and is under pressure to reform Iraq's political patronage system.

He thanked the priest "and his staff for all they do for the nation," anglicannews.org reports.
Iraq has spent years besieged by an offshoot of the Islamic State that has left its already shrunken population of Christians even further depleted.

Partly in recognition of his efforts to heal the ensuing societal and religious rifts, Father Faiz was named one of the Ministry of Culture's Distinguished Personalities of the Year in 2017. 

More here-

 https://international.la-croix.com/news/iraqs-leader-hails-peace-efforts-of-anglican-church/9405#

‘Vicar of Baghdad’ Cleared of Paying ISIS to Redeem Yazidi Sex Slaves

From Christianity Today-

Andrew White, best known as the former vicar of Baghdad, Iraq, has been cleared of criminal charges for allegedly paying Islamic State terrorists to redeem Yazidi sex slaves.

“For one year I have been under police investigation in response to a serious incident report submitted by FRRME to the Charity Commission indicating that I had paid money to ISIS terrorists in order to redeem sex slaves,” said White, 54, who pastored Baghdad’s St. George’s Anglican church until leaving in 2014 after ISIS offered a $57 million bounty for him. “This information was not true and finally, this month the case was officially dropped and I have been cleared from any further police investigation.”

Starting in 2014, ISIS terrorists overran the Yazidi enclave on Mount Sinjar in Iraqi Kurdistan. They abducted thousands of women and girls from this pre-Islamic religious minority and sold many as sex slaves. This action caused a handful of human rights activists independently to attempt buy-back redemptions of slaves. But anyone who channeled money to terrorists could be subject to criminal prosecution.

More here-

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2018/june/andrew-white-vicar-baghdad-cleared-isis-yazidi-sex-slaves.html  

Vicar of Baghdad receives sign from God and visits Alderney

From The Channel Islands-

Jerusalem-based Canon Andrew White was the vicar of St George’s Church in Baghdad, the only Anglican church in Iraq, and had a role trying to maintain communications between Shia and Sunni leaders.

Canon White, who is a Harvard fellow, said that he had been asked to ‘prophesise’ for a visiting group of Christians from the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry in Redding, California.

He shared the details on a YouTube broadcast.

‘One of the people, Ivan, lived in Wales but he was from Guernsey,’ he said.

‘When I prophesised over him I said the Lord is calling us to do new work in Alderney.

‘Alderney is one of the smallest of the Channel Islands that hardly anybody has ever heard of. I said to him I feel we are being called to Alderney but God will confirm it within one day.’

Read more at

https://guernseypress.com/news/2018/02/18/vicar-of-baghdad-receives-sign-from-god-and-visits-alderney/#dZ2s1REBUxZjiXtV.99

Christian cry with joy as they celebrate first Christmas in Mosul since ISIS were driven out of shattered Iraqi city they terrorized for four years

From The Daily Mail-

Christians celebrated Christmas in Iraq's second city of Mosul for the first time in four years today - and hymns and cries of joy flooded the church. 

The seasonal event marked the end of jihadist rule in the city and the Mass opened with the Iraqi national anthem as women wailed with emotion. 

Despite the modest interior of the church and the armoured police outside, wheelchair-bound Hossam Abud, 48, who returned this month from exile in Iraqi Kurdistan, said: 'This is a sign that life is returning to Mosul.' 

In 2014 when the Islamic State group seized the city ordering people to convert, pay taxes, leave or die, Mr Abud and thousands of other Christians fled Mosul.     


Read more:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5210403/ISIS-defeat-means-Christians-celebrate-Christmas-Mosul.html#ixzz52N9MsqB3

THE PRIEST WHO IS HELPING KEEP CHRISTIANS AND THEIR FAITH ALIVE IN IRAQ

From The Tablet-

Even though IS has been driven out, extremists are still operating there.

Christians are still being persecuted in Iraq and the threat of extermination must not be forgotten, according to a priest from the region.

Fr Daniel, 27, was in London this week to brief MPs, Peers and church leaders about the ongoing crisis in Iraq.

He handed prime minister Theresa May a scorched Arabic Bible recovered from Karamles near Mosul, Iraq, to as part of the campaign to raise awareness of the plight of persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

According to a report by the charity Open Doors, the charity that supports persecuted Christians, more than 100,000 Christians have left Iraq since the conflict with IS began in 2014, while as many as half of Syria’s estimated 1.7 million Christians have fled the country since 2011.

More here-

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/8250/0/the-priest-who-is-helping-keep-christians-and-their-faith-alive-in-iraq

The Last of the First Christians

From Plough-

It’s been several years since I quit my job as director of Freiburg Seminary to live and work among the poor in Leipzig, Germany, along with three other members of the Little Brothers of Jesus, a religious order inspired by Charles de Foucauld. At an open house for our neighbors, many of them refugees from the Middle East, a thickset man of about forty comes up to me. Beside him is a boy with jet-black hair who looks about eleven. Yousif – as the broad-shouldered stranger turns out to be called – addresses me. I don’t understand him, but the boy already speaks excellent German and translates for him, “We are from Iraq, from Mosul. Please help us!”

The tasks awaiting me flash before my eyes: my duties in the parish and as a chaplain at a prison and a college. I feel like saying, “Sorry, I’d love to, but I haven’t got time.” But I can’t do it. The next day, I call to arrange a visit. My life hasn’t been the same since.

A few days later, I ring the doorbell of an eleven-story apartment block. Yousif lives on the third floor with his wife, Tara, and their two children, Amanuel and Shaba. They invite me into their living room. Yousif’s request for help, I learn, concerns his children. There are problems at school. Amanuel, a slightly built boy, confides to me that he is regularly bullied by his Muslim schoolmates because of the small cross he has always worn around his neck, even when things got dangerous for Christians in Mosul. Spotting it, an older Muslim boy had begun calling him names, then pretended to point a machine gun at him: “Ratatatata! Shoot the Christians!”

More here-

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/faith/witness/the-last-of-the-first-christians

1.5 million Christians have fled Iraq in an exodus that could lead to the extinction of the faith in the land

From Christian Today-

As many as 1.5 million Christians have fled Iraq since the rise of Islamic State, according to an Iraqi MP.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Christian lawyer Josef Sleve said that just 14 years ago, there had been nearly two milliion Christians in Iraq.

There are now between 500,000 and 850,000.

'This means that over the past 14 years, some 1.5 million Christians have emigrated to other countries," said Sleve.

The exodus began after the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a coalition including forces from the US, Australia, the UK and Poland. But most fled the terrors of Islamic State, which wants to wipe out Christians and is notorious for its executions by beheading.


More here-

https://www.christiantoday.com/article/1-5-million-christians-have-fled-iraq-in-an-exodus-that-could-lead-to-the-extinction-of-the-faith-in-the-land/108469.htm

Archbishop reflects on meeting Iraqi Christians in Jordan

From Justin Welby-

Yesterday we visited St Paul's Anglican Church in Amman, Jordan. It is an extraordinary place - a congregation made up of Jordanians, a few Egyptians, some Syrians (though many of these have been resettled) and Iraqi refugees.

It was their stories which I found especially moving. The intense suffering of Iraqi Christians does not end when they leave Iraq. As I listened, there was this awful sense of lives torn apart.
People are divided from their children and families and have no idea what will happen. One woman has children in both Germany and the Netherlands, but has been refused entry to both so she doesn't know when or if they will ever be reunited.

Young men are vulnerable to being recruited to extremist causes because their community and networks have been stripped away.
One man told me he has no hope at all. He said he is caught between Islamic State, the government and NGOs who further discriminate against him because he is a Christian.

More here-

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5858/archbishop-reflects-on-meeting-iraqi-christians-in-jordan-

Iraqi Refugee is Ordained as Priest in Anglican Church

From Christian Post-

In a historic event, an Iraqi refugee who became a Chaldean Catholic priest has been ordained into the Anglican Church.

Fr. Ayoob Shawkat Adwar is the first priest from the Chaldean Catholic Church to ever be ordained into the Church of England.

He received his priestly orders from the Bishop of New Westminster Melissa Skelton at the Church of Epiphany in Surrey on March 26.

Adwar was born in Mosul, Iraq and spent time in the war-torn nation as a Chaldean priest after his ordination in 2008. When fighting erupted in the city, his family decided to leave and seek refuge elsewhere outside Iraq.

His family came to Canada in 2012 and he himself followed in 2014 when his refugee status was approved, said the Anglican Journal.

Read more at -

http://www.christianpost.com/news/iraqi-refugee-is-ordained-as-priest-in-anglican-church-181675/#SEBdL3gIS3Blx2F0.99

Christianity in Iraq is finished, says Canon Andrew White, 'vicar of Baghdad'

From Fox-

He is one of the world’s most prominent priests, but Canon Andrew White – known as the “Vicar of Baghdad” – has reached a painstaking conclusion: Christianity is all but over in the land where it all began.

“The time has come where it is over, no Christians will be left. Some stay Christians should stay to maintain the historical presence, but it has become very difficult. The future for the community is very limited,” White told Fox News this week. “The Christians coming out of Iraq and ISIS areas in the Middle East all say the same thing, there is no way they are ever going back. They have had enough.”

Thirty years ago, there were approximately 1.4 million Christians in Iraq. The number dwindled to around 1 million after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, and a year ago it was estimated that there were less than 250,000 left. Numbers have continued to decline as families flee, and today even approximate figures are difficult to obtain.


More here-

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/03/21/christianity-in-iraq-is-finished-says-canon-andrew-white-vicar-baghdad.html

'Vicar of Baghdad' Andrew White Explains Why He Likes Donald Trump

From Christian Post-

In a new video posted to YouTube, a prominent Anglican priest who is known as the "Vicar of Baghdad" explains why he likes U.S. President Donald Trump in relation to his dealings with the Middle East and persecuted Christians.

The world needs to realize the fact that "there is a new president, and actually there is hope with this president," says the Rev. Canon Andrew White, the founder of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, in the video which he shot in London.

"There is very much hope for the persecuted Christians in the (Middle East) region," he adds.

"It's very interesting that even though President Trump had said no Iraqis were allowed into America, it now looks he's gone back on that original issue, and he's allowing the Iraqis in because he acknowledges how much the Iraqis did in the combat of 2003 and held close the Americans and the Iraqis who were working together. So there are positive things there."

While wearing a Wheaton College sweatshirt, the 53-year-old British clergyman mentioned several places he plans to visit during an upcoming trip to the United States, including Patrick Henry College, a Christian school in Northern Virginia, and some members of the Trump administration.
Read more at

http://www.christianpost.com/news/vicar-of-baghdad-andrew-white-likes-donald-trump-176767/#HigrbkoKyG6cJ0KO.99

'Vicar of Baghdad' suspended over suspicion of buying back sex slaves from ISIS

From Christian Times-

The Anglican church leader known as the "Vicar of Baghdad" is being suspected of buying back sex slaves to free them from ISIS.

The Rev. Andrew White has been suspended from the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, where he sits as president, pending investigation of the case.

The charity is also being investigated by the Charity Commission, according to Anglican News. The inquiry into FRRME was opened on June 9.

The organization refused to comment on the issue while the inquiry is ongoing.

More here-

http://www.christiantimes.com/article/vicar-of-baghdad-suspended-over-suspicion-of-buying-back-sex-slaves-from-isis/58687.htm

Anglican leader in Iraq suspended in ISIS funding inquiry

From RNS-

The Rev. Andrew White, acclaimed as the Anglican “Vicar of Baghdad” for his outreach among Iraqi Christians, has been suspended with pay and his British charity placed under official investigation over allegations that money used to redeem sex slaves ended up in the hands of the Islamic State.

“We never gave the bad guys one penny,” White said in denying the charges.

The U.K.’s official Charity Commission on Thursday (June 23) “confirmed that it opened a statutory inquiry into the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East on June 9, 2016.”

More here-

http://religionnews.com/2016/06/23/anglican-leader-in-iraq-suspended-in-isis-funding-inquiry/

Another irreplaceable loss for Christianity: ISIS destroys ancient Iraqi monastery

From Fox-

Mosul’s massive, stone-walled monastery of St. Elijah, dating from the sixth century and distinguished by an entryway etched by Christian monks with Chi Rho, the first Greek letters of the word Kristos, “Christ,” has been obliterated. From satellite photos of the isolated hill where it had stood, it was confirmed today that the monastery was pulverized into a field of grey dust by ISIS fanatics, evidently using some determined application of sledgehammers, bulldozers and explosives.

Built before Christianity’s sectarian divisions and having gathered Christian worshipers for one and a half millennia, this ancient sacred edifice, now reduced to rubble, represents yet another irreparable loss to Christian patrimony at the hands of these Islamist extremists.  But, even more importantly, its destruction also symbolizes the genocide of Iraq’s Christian people and their civilization. It gives shocking reminder that Nineveh has been inalterably changed. Its pluralistic cultural mosaic since antiquity has been shattered and putting it back together may prove impossible in this generation.

More here-

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/01/20/another-irreplaceable-loss-for-christianity-isis-destroys-ancient-iraqi-monastery.html

Canon Andrew White: 'Vicar of Baghdad' on leading a church in Iraq and being in the crosshairs of Isis

From Independent UK-

They were coming for him and his people. Friends were being killed or fleeing for their lives. So Andrew White did what he always does when faced with an enemy. “I invited the leaders of Isis [Islamic State] for dinner. I am a great believer in that. I have asked some of the worst people ever to eat with me.”

This extraordinarily self-confident priest is best known as the vicar of Baghdad, leader of a church in the chaos outside the protected Green Zone. He made his offer last year as the terrorist forces threatened to take the city. Did he get a reply?

“Isis said, ‘You can invite us to dinner, but we’ll chop your head off.’ So I didn’t invite them again!” 

More here-

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/canon-andrew-white-vicar-of-baghdad-on-leading-a-church-in-iraq-and-being-in-the-crosshairs-of-isis-a6716616.html

St. Martin's Episcopal priest raising funds to help Iraqi Christian refugees

From Pennsylvania-

When most people read about atrocities taking place in a faraway land or see a report on TV or on the Internet, they may be concerned and possibly send in a donation.

But when the Rev. Chris Bishop learned the violent group ISIS was driving Iraqi Christians from their homes, beheading men who refuse to convert to Islam and forcing women and girls into sexual slavery, he had to act.

“The father of one of my parishioners was living and working in Erbil for several years,” said Bishop, who is the priest in charge at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Radnor. Erbil is the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, a place where some 120,000 Iraqi Christian refugees have fled for sanctuary. “He came to see his kids who were in a Christmas pageant. He and I struck up a conversation,” said Bishop.

More here-

http://www.mainlinemedianews.com/articles/2015/07/08/main_line_suburban_life/news/doc559d323c5ac7a846437800.txt

'Vicar of Baghdad' recounts Christian persecution at hands of ISIS

From The Deseret News-

As one of the foremost Christian leaders in Iraq for nearly two decades, Rev. Canon Andrew White is all too familiar with the wave of crises that has hit the country.

But even Rev. White, who was until last year the leader of one of the largest Christian churches in that country and is widely known as the "Vicar of Baghdad," never could have foreseen the naked terror oppressed Christians there now experience at the hands of ISIS terrorists.

"It is happening now in our midst and the persecution of Christians is like we'd never expect would happen," he told several dozen gathered at the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. Mark on Monday. "All I know is we are not (ceasing) to love Jesus. We are still serving him."

More here-

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865631242/Vicar-of-Baghdad-recounts-Christian-persecution-at-hands-of-ISIS.html?pg=all