Pope Francis Says Christians Are Being ‘Driven From the Middle East’

ERBIL, Iraq (AFP) — Pope Francis said Christians are being “driven from the Middle East,” in a message to Iraqi Christians forced to flee by Islamic State group jihadists.

“It would seem that they (the extremists) do not want there to be any Christians, but you bear witness to Christ,” he said in a video address timed to coincide with a visit Saturday by French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin to the Iraqi Kurdish city of Erbil.

“I think of the wounds, of the pain of women with their children, the elderly and the displaced, the wounds of those who are victims of every type of violence,” Francis said according to a transcript.

Thousands of Christians took refuge in Erbil after IS jihadists in June overran Mosul, Iraq’s second city, and forced hundreds of thousands of them, as well as members of the Yazidi community, to flee their homes.

“Due to an extremist and fundamentalist group, entire communities, especially, but not only, Christians and Yazidi, have suffered and continue to suffer, inhuman violence because of their religious and ethnic identity,” the pope said.

“Christians and Yazidi have been forced out of their homes; they have had to abandon everything to save their lives, but they have not denied their faith.”

“Even holy buildings, monuments, religious symbols and cultural heritage have been affected by the violence, almost as if to cancel every trace, every memory of the other.”

Last weekend, the pontiff visited Turkey where he met Bartholomew I, the ecumenical patriarch and spiritual leader of the world’s roughly 250 million Orthodox Christians.

The two clerics issued a joint statement in which they spoke out against anti-Christian violence in the region.

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