The victims of the 2010 attack on a Catholic cathedral in Baghdad will be put forward for beatification in 2016, a Church leader has said.
Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan said he planned to launch the Cause of the 48 victims next year. According to AsiaNews, he made the announcement at the beatification of Bishop Flavianus Michael Melki in Harissa, Lebanon, on Saturday.
The attack, which took place October 31, 2010, led to the deaths of 48 Catholics at the Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Chaldean Catholic Cathedral. Among the dead were the two priests who had been celebrating evening Mass in the cathedral at the time of the attack.
Speaking out against a perceived lack of protection of Christians in the Middle East by Western nations Patriarch Younan criticised the “passivity of the great powers” that “claim to defend liberty” but abandon entire communities “who took the risk of staying”.
Patriarch Younan did not fail to note that all the Christians of the East – Chaldean, Assyrians, Maronites, Melkites, and Armenians – are as threatened as Syriac Catholics, adding that’ “when the persecution is not physical, it is moral”.
The prelate said the international community was shirking its duty to extend hospitality to refugees, leaving instead a small country like Lebanon to face the burden of hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
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