Christians in Middle East face growing threat, top cleric says

Christians in Middle East face growing threat, top cleric says

SEPTEMBER 27, 2014    LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2014, 12:35 AM
BY HANNAN ADELY
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD

The patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, a cleric who formerly lived in Teaneck, recalled his visit recently to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, where thousands of Christians have fled for their lives. A young boy in a crowded church threw up his arms and said to the patriarch: “We have no place. We have no space.”

He meant a real, physical place for Christians like him and his family, who were expelled from ancient Christian towns in Syria and Iraq. But Patriarch Mor Ignatius Aphrem II said he also understood his words to mean a place in the culture, religion and life of the Middle East.

“Their existence is threatened,” Aphrem said during an interview last week at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Teaneck, where he served for 18 years until his election as Antiochan patriarch last spring. “This has been their home for 2,000 years, and thousands of years before that they were indigenous to the area. There’s a real threat that they’ll be driven out of the Middle East and there won’t be Christians anymore in the area where Christ was born.”

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/christians-in-middle-east-face-growing-threat-top-cleric-says-1.1097413#sthash.yMn19AcU.dpuf