Qaraqosh holds first mass in two years
qaraqosh — A handful of faithful gathered in a burnt out church on Sunday for the first mass to be celebrated in two years in Qaraqosh, which was once Iraq’s main Christian town.
Iraqi forces retook Qaraqosh from the Daesh group days earlier, as part of a massive offensive to wrest back the country’s second city Mosul.
“After two years and three months in exile, I prayed in the cathedral of the Immaculate Conception the Daesh wanted to destroy,” Yohanna Petros Mouche, the Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, said. “But in my heart it was always there,” Mouche, who officiated with four priests, told.
Daesh militants took over swathes of Iraq in June 2014, also taking Mosul where the prelate was based.
He moved to Qaraqosh, a town with a mostly Christian population of around 50,000 that was controlled by Kurdish forces and lies east of Mosul in the Nineveh plain. But a second militant sweep towards Kurdish-controlled areas two months later forced around 120,000 Iraqi Christians and members of other minorities to leave their towns and villages.
“We had no other choice but to convert or become slaves. We fled to preserve our faith. Now we’re going to need international protection,” Father Majeed Hazem said. Mouche led mass on an improvised altar in front of a modest congregation mostly made up of members of the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU), a local Christian militia.
“I can’t describe what I’m feeling. This is my land, my church,” said Samer Shabaoun, a militiaman who was involved in operations to retake Qaraqosh.
Shortly before Sunday’s mass, the soldiers now guarding Qaraqosh were surprised to find two elderly women in a bouse, one of them bedridden. “We stayed the whole of the occupation by the Daesh, from the first day. Sometimes they would bring us food,” one of them said.
The bell tower of the church was damaged, and the floor is still covered in soot from the fire the militants lit.
“This church is such a powerful symbol that if we hadn’t found it like this, damaged but still standing, I’m not sure residents would have wanted to come back,” Mouche said.—