Founded in 2015, the Catholic University in Erbil, located in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, offers education, scholar-ships and support to the Iraqi minority groups that suffered under ISIS. In 2014, so-called Islamic State swept across nor-thern Iraq, capturing vast swathes of territory. The invasion led to mass displacement, particularly of minority groups such as Christians, Yazidis, Turkmen and Shabak. Many of these re-fugees fled to the Kurdish region of northeast Iraq, where – says Fr Karam Shahmasha, a priest of the local Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese – the local Church sought to provide them with housing, food, and medical care.
In time, Fr Shahmasha tells Vatican News, these charitable initiatives gave rise to an even bigger project: the founding of the Catholic University in Erbil, or CUE, which aimed to be a “beacon of light in the midst of chaos”. The goal was to welcome students of all backgrounds, particularly to those who had suffered the most from recent violence.
In a talk at Boston College in 2023, Archbishop Bashar Warda, CUE’s Chancellor and Chairman of the Board of Trustees, stressed that “We opened the doors of CUE to those most affected by ISIS: the forcibly displaced, the Christians, and the Yazidis … We are committed to being a strong voice for the hurt.”