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On October 9, 2014, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia sent a letter to Iraqi President Fuad Masum, expressing concern for the situation of Christians in northern Iraq. “Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians and people of other religions have been forced to leave their homes”, the letter states.

Patriarch Kirill stated that “Christians in Iraq are in a state bordering on despair, with many of them abandoning themselves to the idea that they have to leave forever not only Iraq but the Middle East altogether, since they cannot feel safe in Iraq. The disappearance of Christianity in this old region will have disastrous consequences for the entire world community”.

In his message to the President of Iraq, the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church also raises the problem of the fate of Iraq’s former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz (Michael John who) who has been imprisoned already for 11 years and in September 2014 appealed to the world community, including the Russian Orthodox Church, to help release him.

 

DECR Communication Service