For many in Sydney's Assyrian community, the images of violence at the Christ The Good Shepherd Church on Monday evening brought flashbacks of war. Jacqueline Georges arrived in Australia in 1984, fleeing Iraq. Monday night's attack has shaken her. "We felt devastated, shocked and violated," she said. "We left our countries because of these things.
(BBC) -- Australian police have declared Monday's stabbing at a church in Sydney a "terrorist act". A 15-year-old boy was arrested after a bishop and several churchgoers were stabbed during the sermon. The incident happened in the evening at the Christ The Good Shepherd Church in the suburb of Wakeley. At least four people were stabbed but police say none of their injuries were life-threatening.
The plight of Mosul's Christian community has largely gone unnoticed for two decades. Since the city fell under the control of ISIS (also referred to as ISIL) in 2014, it has been a staging ground for bombings of churches. Armed groups have killed, blackmailed, and abducted numerous Christians there -- both clergy and laypeople -- since 2003.
Through April 30, the Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS) is hosting a traveling exhibit, "Assyrians from Persia (Iran) to the United States, 1887-1923: Assyrian Education, American Missionaries, and the Search for a Home." In conjunction with the exhibit, PHS welcomed Dr. Hooman Estelami of Fordham University for an event and talk on March 21.
The head of the Chaldean Church in Iraq and the world, Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako, announced on Thursday his return to his headquarters in Baghdad upon a personal invitation from Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
Last year, the Iraqi government revoked a decree that formally recognized the religious status of the country's top Catholic leader. Cardinal Louis Sako, the Chaldean Catholic patriarch of Baghdad, fled the capital for the autonomous region of Kurdistan, and now calls himself "a bit like a refugee.