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we pray in tents, having left behind ancient churches that lived the story of a
?ourishing Christianity, blessed with strong, willing believers and martyrs.

Too many families have lost con?dence in their homeland. This should
not surprise anyone. The homeland of Christians has rejected them and thrown
them up. They have chosen to emigrate to the unknown, con?dent that they
will be more secure. The road to immigration has a very long queue. Our
friends and families are queued up waiting for months and years in Turkey,
Lebanon and Jordan for a chance to move again, maybe for the last time, to
North America, Europe, Australia or Canada. The di?erence in outlook be-
tween the internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees is that the refugees
have made a ?nal decision to get out. The IDP crisis that we are now experi-
encing in Kurdistan is known as a refugee crisis in the lands of our neighbours.
The displaced have either not made a ?nal decision or have decided to try to
save more money before they depart.

It is an understatement for me simply to say that we are in desperate
need of ?nancial and material support so that our families may stay and sur-
vive, or depart and survive. This crisis is one of chronic urgent need.

For the Chaldean Church and our sister churches of the East, the perse-
cution our community is enduring is doubly painful and severe. We are person-
ally a?ected by need and by the reality that our vibrant church’s life is dissolv-
ing in front of our eyes. The massive immigration that is now occurring is leav-
ing my church, and other churches, weaker. This is a deeply sorrowful reality.
We, who are part of the church hierarchy, are very often tempted to encourage
our parishioners to stay to keep the presence of Christ alive in this special land,
but truly, I and my brother bishops and priests can do no more than to advise
young mothers and fathers to take all the necessary considerations into ac-
count and to pray long and hard before taking such a momentous, and perhaps
perilous decision. The Church is unable to o?er and guarantee the fundamental
security that its members need to thrive. It is no secret that hatred of minori-
ties has intensi?ed in certain quarters over the past few years. It is di?cult to
understand this hate. We are hated because we persist in wanting to exist as
Christians. In other words, we are hated because we persist in demanding a
basic human right.

All of us have a responsibility to help them through our personal
prayers, I ask you to pray every day for our community, sacri?ces for them, and
then through a campaign of raising the awareness of the international commu-
nity about the fragile condition of our Iraqi Christian community.

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