Iraq church gives hope for Christians after IS atrocities

With chants and ululations, Iraqi Christians celebrated the inauguration of a recently-restored Chaldean Catholic Church in Mosul on Friday, years after jihadists turned it into a religious police office.

Around 300 faithful attended the first mass in the 80-year-old church of Um al-Mauna -- "Our Lady of Perpetual Help" after it was fully renovated. They prayed and took photos on mobile phones.

"I've been waiting for this day," 74-year-old former school director Ilham Abdullah said.

"We hope that Christian families will come back and life will return to what it used to be" in Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, home to one of the world's oldest Christian communities.

Mosul, Iraq's second city, has historically been among the Arab world's most culturally diverse cities -- a place of mosques, churches, shrines and tombs.

But when the Islamic State group (IS) swept into Iraq in 2014, they announced their "caliphate" from Mosul, and their onslaught forced hundreds of thousands of Christians in the Nineveh province to flee.

On the outside wall of Um al-Mauna the jihadists wrote "no entry, by order of the Islamic State Hesba Division (the religious police)", tasked with imposing harsh rules that included ordering Christians to convert to Islam, pay a special tax, leave or face execution.

"I feel like I have been brought back to life," said Abdel Masih Selim, a 75-year-old retired banker, who fled the rule of IS in Mosul, settling in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.

Salim, who came to Mosul specially for the mass, said Chaldeans "have come to see their church that they were forced to abandon when Daesh oppressors ruined it", using another name for IS.

- 'This is our country' -

In 2017, the US-backed Iraqi army drove IS out after months of gruelling fighting, and the Chaldean church was left plastered with the group's propaganda.

During IS rule, all marks of Christianity were removed, and not a single statue of the Virgin Mary or the crucifix of Jesus Christ survived.

Instead, jihadists had scribbled their noms de guerre on the church's walls.

But today, the small church has restored its former design, with its two red-painted domes carrying large crucifixes, and a renovated bell tower.

In its courtyard, photos show the state of the building after it was saved from IS, and others illustrated the restoration process.

In Mosul, several other churches and monasteries are being renovated, but reconstruction is slow, and many Christians have not returned.

Pope Francis made a historic visit to the city in 2021 meant to encourage the Christian community and deepen interfaith dialogue.

Chaldeans, the majority of Iraq's Christians, numbered more than a million before the 2003 war that led to the ouster of Saddam Hussein, but the community has since dwindled to just 400,000 in the face of recurring violence that ravaged the country.

Yet Raphael Sako, the patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic church, said despite the difficulties, Iraq's Christians have a future in the country.

"This is our country and our land," he said during the inauguration. "We are here to stay even if there aren't many of us left."