Patriarch Louis Sako of the Chaldean Catholic Church took the unprecedented move of cancelling Christmas celebrations in Iraq, following the violence unleashed upon regime protesters in Baghdad and elsewhere that left hundreds dead. “Morally and spiritually,” Cardinal Sako told Associated Press, “we cannot celebrate in such an atmosphere of tension … It’s not normal to

The Heirs of Patriarch Shaker by Augin Kurt Haninke, Nineveh press, 362pp, £18 The Heirs of Patriarch Shaker is a history of the Syrian Orthodox Church – an autocephalous miaphysite body with a mostly ethnically Assyrian congregation – during the 20th century, the most trying period in its two millennia of existence. Augin Kurt Haninke

On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War Mardean Isaac says western states are forcing Iraqi Christians to return home