MOSUL,
Iraq — Dozens of faithful celebrated mass Saturday at a
Mosul church in northern Iraq for the first time since it was restored after its ransacking by Daesh extremists.
اضافة اعلان
Daesh swept into Mosul and proclaimed it their
“capital” in 2014, in an onslaught that forced hundreds of thousands of
Christians in the northern Nineveh province to flee, some to Iraq’s nearby
Kurdistan region.
The Iraqi army drove out the Islamist extremists
three years later after months of grueling street fighting that devastated the
city.
The Mar Tuma Syriac Catholic church, which dates
back to the 19th century, was used by the jihadists as a prison or a court.
Restoration work is ongoing and its marble floor has
been dismantled to be completely redone.
In September 2021, a new bell was inaugurated at the
church during a ceremony attended by dozens of worshippers.
The 285kg bell cast in
Lebanon rang out on Saturday
to cries of joy before the mass got underway, an AFP correspondent said.
The service began with worshippers who packed the
church chanting hymns as an organist played.
“This is the most beautiful church in
Iraq,” said
Father Pios Affas, 82, the delighted parish priest.
Affas also paid tribute to those behind the
restoration work which, he said, had “brought the church back to its past
glory, like the way it was 160 years ago”.
Inside the church, ochre and grey marble shone in
the nave, where the altar and colonnaded arches were restored and new stained
glass installed.
The Islamist extremist had destroyed all Christian
symbols, including the holy cross, and parts of the church were damaged by fire
and shelling.
Artisans worked diligently to “clean the scorched
marble” and restore it, Fraternity in Iraq, a
French NGO that aids religious
minorities, which helped fund the restoration work said earlier this year.
Outbuildings and rooms on the first floor, where
windows have been broken and Daesh graffiti can be seen, are still due to be
repaired.
Mosul and the surrounding plains of Nineveh were
once home to one of the region’s oldest
Christian communities.
Iraq’s Christian population has shrunk to fewer than
400,000 from around 1.5 million before the US-led invasion of 2003 that toppled
dictator Saddam Hussein.
Nineveh province was left in ruins after three years
of Islamist extremist occupation which ended in 2017 when Iraqi forces backed
by US-led coalition air strikes pushed them out.
Several monasteries and churches are being renovated
but reconstruction is slow, and the Christian population that has fled has not
returned.
Pope Francis made a historic visit to the region last year.
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