After being forced to leave their homes in the Iraqi city of Mosul because of religious extre-mism and violence ten years ago, very few Christian families have returned home. According to Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul, Amel Shimon Nona, the majority of the 1,200 Christian families had left the city of Mosul due to the violence carried out by the so-called Islamic State (IS).
In an interview with the Vatican’s Fides news agency, the Archbishop said he and his priests sought refuge in the villages of the Nineveh Plain, such as Kra-mles and Tilkif, during the height of the war. “Our church, dedicat-ed to the Holy Spirit, was looted by gangs of thieves while the city was being taken over by IS. How-ever, the Muslim families living nearby called the Islamist mili-tiamen, who intervened and put an end to the looting,” said Abp Nona. Christians began departing in droves after IS “marked” their homes for expropriation. Two nuns and three teenagers were tempo-rarily kidnapped by the jihadists. Then, in January 2015, the soldiers of IS expelled from Mosul ten elderly Chaldean and Syrian Ca-tholic Christians after they refused to renounce Christianity and con-vert to Islam.