Christians divided over security

Iraq’s main Churches are divided over how best to safeguard Christians in the north of the country after the defeat of Islamic State (IS) militants in that region, writes Abigail Frymann Rouch. Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil told The Tablet the Chaldean Church rejected the idea of an internationally protected enclave: earlier this month some bishops from the Syriac Catholic and Syriac Orthodox Churches supported such a move.

Iraqi Christians are deeply concerned that even after the military defeat of IS – which still holds part of the city of Mosul – IS sympathisers may remain among the population.
 
However, Archbishop Warda said: “Being a sovereign country you cannot really ask for international troops to come and protect you … It would be good if it would be granted, but it’s not realistic.” He said Christians’ future lay in working with Iraqis of all faiths. Foreign countries, he said, had a role in putting pressure on “all concerned parties”.


Egypt: The persecution of Christians in Egypt was raised by the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Tawadros II, as he visited the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, last week, writes Sarah Mac Donald. Pope Tawadros, in Ireland to consecrate two new Coptic churches in Dublin and Waterford, warned that in Egypt today, “Christians are struggling for their existence”.

“We have a long history of martyrs,” the Coptic Pope said and referred to the “martyrs” of St George’s Church in Tanta and St Mark’s Cathedral, Alexandria, on Palm Sunday when Islamists killed 45 people. Tawadros said the Copts were aiming, with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s Government, “to build a new Egypt” of religious tolerance.