For years, Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil must have felt he was akin to John the Baptist – a voice crying in the wilderness. As the Christians of Iraq were being decimated by the Islamic State (IS) and driven from their historic homelands, Western governments seemed largely unconcerned.

When IS itself was driven out last year of the territory it had occupied on the Plains of Nineveh and Christians started to return but struggled to rebuild their lives in the most precarious conditions, politicians in the West still seemed unwilling to listen.

But then something happened.