Bengt Sjöberg

Iraq's Christians comprise many rites

Theirs is a long and complex history.

Before the Gulf War in 1991, they numbered about one million, but that figures is now put at about 800,000 and falling.

Under Saddam Hussein, in overwhelmingly Muslim Iraq, some Christians rose to the top, notably Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, and the Baathist regime kept a lid on anti-Christian violence.

But this started to change after the removal of Saddam Hussein and the US-led occupation of Iraq.

There has been a spate of attacks on Christian targets in Mosul, Baghdad and elsewhere in recent months. Many Christians have felt intimidated and left the country.

And on Monday, Iraq's most senior Christian clergyman, the Archbishop of Mosul, Basile Georges Casmoussa, was kidnapped. He was released a day later.

He had chosen to stay on and tend to his 35,000-strong congregation, says the BBC's Jim Muir in Baghdad.

Biblical city

In the wake of the 1991 Gulf War and the imposition of sanctions, many Iraqi Christians, who had lived in relative harmony with their Muslim neighbours for decades, left to join family in the West.

The secular government of Saddam Hussein largely suppressed anti-Christian attacks, but it also subjected some communities to its "relocation programmes".

For Christians, this was particularly marked in the oil-rich areas, where the authorities tried to create Arab majorities near the strategic oilfields.

Christians live in the capital, Baghdad, and are also concentrated in the northern cities of Kirkuk, Irbil and Mosul - once a major Mesopotamian trading hub known as Nineveh in the Bible.

Most Iraqi Christians are Chaldeans, Eastern-rite Catholics who are autonomous from Rome but who recognise the Pope's authority.

Chaldeans are an ancient people, many of whom still speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

Monasteries

The other significant community are Assyrians, the descendants of the ancient empires of Assyria and Babylonia.

After their empires collapsed in the 6th and 7th Centuries BC, the Assyrians scattered across the Middle East.

They embraced Christianity in the 1st Century AD, with their Ancient Church of the East believed to be the oldest in Iraq.

Assyrians also belong to the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Chaldean Church, and various Protestant denominations.

When Iraq became independent in 1932, the Iraqi military carried out large-scale massacres of the Assyrians in retaliation for their collaboration with Britain, the former colonial power.

Their villages were destroyed, and churches and monasteries torn down.

In recent years, however, some places of worship were rebuilt.

Other ancient Churches include Syrian Catholics, Armenian Orthodox and Armenian Catholic Christians, who fled from massacres in Turkey in the early 20th Century.

There are also small Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic communities, as well as Anglicans and Evangelicals.

The church's community in Iraq is said to be 550,000-strong

Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was seized as he left a church in the eastern al-Nour district, it added.

Pope Benedict XVI deplored the kidnapping as a "despicable" crime.

Most of Iraq's estimated 700,000 Christians are Chaldeans - Catholics who are autonomous from Rome but recognise the Pope's authority.

Many have been targeted since the 2004 invasion by Sunni extremists groups.

In January, bombs exploded outside three Chaldean and Assyrian churches in Mosul. Several Christian priests have also been kidnapped or killed during the past five years.

'Fervent prayer'

Archbishop Rahho had just left the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul, where he had been leading afternoon prayers, when his car was ambushed by armed men, a church spokesman said.

The gunmen opened fire on the car, killing his two companions and driver, before kidnapping the archbishop, he added.

It's a terrible time for our church - pray for us Bishop Rabban al-Qas Iraq's human mosaic crushed Iraqi Christians' long history Who are the Chaldeans?

Bishop Rabban al-Qas of the nearby city of Irbil said his 65-year-old colleague, who was ordained archbishop of Mosul in 2001, was "in the hands of terrorists".

"But we don't know what physical condition [he is in]," he told the Rome-based Catholic news service, AsiaNews.

"It's a terrible time for our church - pray for us," he added.

The kidnappers have reportedly communicated their demands, but these have not been made public.

The Vatican later issued a statement saying the Pope was saddened by "this despicable act" which "touches the whole of the church in that country".

"The Holy Father asks the universal Church to join in his fervent prayer so that reason and humanity prevails in the kidnappers and Monsignor Rahho is returned to his flock soon," it said.

The incident comes less than year after a Chaldean priest and three sub-deacons were gunned down the same church in Mosul after celebrating Sunday Mass.

The Syrian Catholic archbishop of Mosul, Basile Georges Casmoussa, was kidnapped at gunpoint in 2005, but was released after one day without a ransom having been paid.

Christians targeted

There are an estimated 50,000 Christians in the traditionally ethnically and religiously mixed city of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest and a centre of the oil industry.

But a rise in attacks on Christians by Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003 has prompted many to leave.

Last June, Pope Benedict told US President George W Bush he was deeply concerned about the plight of Iraq's Christians as a result of the ongoing insurgency.

"Particularly in Iraq, Christian families and communities are feeling increasing pressure from insecurity, aggression and a sense of abandonment," he said.

Originally made up of members of the Nestorian Church, the traditional liturgical language of the Chaldean church is Syriac - a descendent of Aramaic, which is thought to have been spoken by Jesus and his disciples.

The church's community in Iraq is said to be 550,000-strong and its best-known member is Saddam Hussein's former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz.

The Chaldean Patriarch, Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, is based in Baghdad.