Christians hold first service in restored Mosul church

Iraqi Christians have celebrated Mass at a Mosul church for the first time since it was restored after being ransacked by ISIS.

The terrorist group swept into Mosul in 2014, forcing hundreds of thousands of Christians in the northern Nineveh province to flee, some of them to the nearby Kurdistan region.

The Iraqi army drove out the extremist group three years later after months of street fighting that devastated the city.

The Mar Tuma Syriac Catholic Church, which dates back to the 19th century, was used by ISIS as a court and a jail.

In September, a new bell was inaugurated at the church during a ceremony attended by dozens of worshippers.

The 285-kilogram bell, cast in Lebanon, rang out on Saturday to cries of joy before the Mass got under way.

The service began with worshippers singing hymns as an organist played.

“This is the most beautiful church in Iraq,” said Father Pios Affas, 82, the community’s parish priest.

Father Affas also paid tribute to those behind the restoration work which, he said, had “brought the church back to its past glory, like the way it was 160 years ago”.

Inside the church, ochre and grey marble shone in the nave, where the altar and colonnaded arches were restored and new stained glass installed.

ISIS destroyed all Christian symbols and parts of the church were damaged by fire and shelling.

Artisans worked diligently to “clean the scorched marble” and restore it, Fraternity in Iraq, a French NGO that aids religious minorities and which helped fund the restoration, said this year.

Outbuildings and rooms on the first floor, where windows have been broken and ISIS graffiti can be seen, are still to be repaired.

Mosul and the surrounding plains of Nineveh were once home to one of the region’s oldest Christian communities.

Iraq’s Christian population has shrunk from about 1.5 million before the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein to fewer than 400,000.

Nineveh was left in ruins after three years of ISIS occupation, which ended in 2017 when Iraqi forces, backed by US-led coalition air strikes, forced the group out.

Several monasteries and churches are being renovated but this reconstruction is slow and most of the Christian population that fled has yet to return.

In 2018, the UAE teamed up with Unesco to rebuild Al Tahera Church in Mosul as part of its support for postISIS reconstruction in the northern city.

The project was later expanded to include the restoration of Al Saa’a Church.