MOSUL, Iraq — A bell was inaugurated at a church in
Mosul on Saturday to the cheers of Iraqi Christians, seven years after
Daesh
overran the northern city.
اضافة اعلان
Dozens of faithful stood by as Father Pios Affas rang the
newly installed bell for the first time at the Syriac Christian church of Mar
Tuma, an AFP correspondent reported.
It drew applause and ululations from the crowd, who took
photos on mobile phones, before prayers were held.
"After seven years of silence, the bell of Mar Tuma
rang for the first time on the right bank of Mosul," Affas told them.
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 terrorists three years later
after months of grueling street fighting.
The return of the Mosul church bell "heralds days of
hope, and opens the way, God willing, for the return of Christians to their
city," said Affas.
"This is a great day of joy, and I hope the joy will
grow even more when not only all the churches and mosques in Mosul are rebuilt,
but also the whole city, with its houses and historical sites," he told
AFP.
'Back to life'
The bell weighing 285kg was cast in Lebanon with donations
from Fraternity in Iraq, a French NGO that helps religious minorities, and
transported from Beirut to Mosul by plane and truck.
The church of Mar Tuma, which dates back to the 19th
century, was used by the extremists as a prison or a “court”.
Restoration work is ongoing and its marble floor has been
dismantled to be completely redone.
Nidaa Abdel Ahad, one of the faithful attending the
inauguration, said she had returned to her home town from Erbil so that she
could see the church being "brought back to life".
"My joy is indescribable," said the teacher in her
forties. "It's as if the heart of Christianity is beating again."
Faraj-Benoit Camurat, founder and head of Fraternity in
Iraq, said that "all the representations of the cross, all the Christian
representations, were destroyed," including marble altars.
"We hope this bell will be the symbol of a kind of
rebirth in Mosul," he told AFP by telephone.
Iraq's Christian community, which numbered more than 1.5
million in 2003 before the US-led invasion, has shrunk to about 400,000, with
many of them fleeing the recurrent violence that has ravaged the country.
Camurat said around 50 Christian families had resettled in
Mosul, while others travel there to work for the day.
"The Christians could have left forever and abandoned
Mosul," but instead they being very active in the city, he said.
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