Mags GarganIslamic State extremism that “threatens the very survival of Christianity”.
Five Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs from the Middle East have urged Westerners to take action to help ensure that Christians and other minorities can remain in the Middle East.
“Christians are not (just) looking for humanitarian aid. They are looking for humanitarian action, to save Christianity in the Middle East,” said Catholicos Aram of Cilicia, Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
The Armenian Patriarch said a comprehensive strategy was needed to defeat the Islamic State extremism that “threatens the very survival of Christianity” in places like Iraq and Syria. He said it was essential to promote human rights, pluralism and religious freedom.
The September 11 panel was part of the September 9-11 inaugural summit, ‘In Defence of Christians’, a new Washington-based group formed to promote awareness of the plight of Christians in the Middle East, and to advocate on their behalf to US policymakers.
Murdered
In a keynote address earlier that morning, Syriac Orthodox patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II of Antioch spoke of meeting a Syrian Christian father whose wife and two children had been murdered and whose bodies were thrown down a well.
The patriarch also described meeting a Christian boy among 50 families who had fled for their lives and taken refuge in a small, crowded church hall in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
The boy opened his arms, saying, “We have no place!” Others were sleeping in tents, on the street or in parks, the patriarch said.