Agenzia Fides

Baghdad (Agenzia Fides) – Grief and mourning, but also hope and forgiveness are expressed in a heartfelt appeal entrusted to Fides Agency by the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Baghdad, His Eminence Cardinal Emmanuel Delly, after a brutal attack on 2 May on three busloads of Christian students travelling to Mossul.
Here is the Patriarch's message sent to Fides:
“Today our eyes are filled with tears. We are stunned by this attack on innocent young Christian students: two explosions in an act of brutal violence, of which the effect, only thanks to God, was not worse. We are close to the victim's families, we express sincere condolences to those who lost loved ones. We pray for the eternal repose of the souls of the dead, for the recovery of all the injured, some in serious conditions, and for the consolation of the parents. Our reaction today is one of prayer and pardon. We are all brothers and sisters, we are all children of God, and the Iraqi people are called to accept this truth and embrace it.
We pray the Lord will illuminate the minds and hearts of our rulers and also of those who bloody their hands with these and similar acts of violence, that they may convert and take the path of peace and reconciliation. Our Christian response to the violence we suffer day after day is and will always be this: certainty that the Lord is with us and that He makes Himself visible in the love and help shown to us by the Christians of the world ”. (PA) (Agenzia Fides 4/5/2010)