Christian refugees ‘forgotten by West’

AUSTRALIAN BISHOPS who visited refugees from the conflict in Iraq and Syria say those forced from their homes feel abandoned by Western countries, and particularly by Churches in the West.

A seven-member delegation from the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the Conference of Bishops and Representatives of the Middle Eastern Apostolic Churches in Australia and New Zealand visited refugees in Beirut and internally displaced people in Erbil, from 14-21 December. The Syriac Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, His Beatitude Ignatius Youssef III Younan, told the delegation that the Christians of the Middle East felt forgotten by their Christian brothers and sisters in the West.