The shrine in Iraq's northern Nineveh Plains will be the seventh worldwide dedicated to Mary, Mother of Persecuted Christians, when it opens in the town's newly built St. Ephrem Church in October.
Fr. Benedict Kiely, the founder of Nasarean.org, a charity supporting persecuted Christians, presented an icon that will serve as the shrine's focal point to Archbishop Benedict Younan Hano, head of the Syriac Catholic Archeparchy of Mosul.
Hano, who resides at the archeparchy's headquarters in Qaraqosh, received the icon Aug. 6, the 11th anniversary of the exodus of the town's ancient Christian community as ISIS advanced from the nearby city of Mosul.
The Salafi jihadist group had issued ultimatums to Christians in Mosul, insisting that they either convert to Islam, pay a tax for non-Muslims, or face death. The Christian residents of Qaraqosh fled, believing they would face similar ultimatums.
But they began to return to the town after it was liberated from ISIS in 2016 by the Popular Mobilization Forces, a coalition of predominantly Shia Muslim militia groups.
The overall number of Christians in Iraq has declined dramatically in the 21st century, from around 1.5 million at the start of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to roughly 150,000 today. Emigration accelerated after ISIS occupied swathes of Iraq from 2014 to 2017.
Hano, who is also known as Archbishop Benedict, pointed out that the icon presented by Kiely had the words "Mary, Mother of the Persecuted" written in Aramaic above the Madonna and Child.
Christians in the Nineveh Plains are among the few who continue to use Aramaic, the language used by Jesus and the Apostles.
Hano said he hoped the shrine in Qaraqosh, and the six others around the world, would remind Western Christians of the importance of praying for persecuted Christians.
He also expressed hopes that Christians in the West would be reminded of the Church's Eastern roots, as highlighted by Pope Leo XIV in a May 14 address to Eastern Christians.
Kiely, an English priest belonging to the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, told The Pillar via email Aug. 11: "I think it's profoundly symbolic to have a shrine where ISIS took the largest Christian town in Iraq, blew up and desecrated their churches. I remember seeing in 2018 the bullet holes in one church they used for target practice."
"Now, Christians have returned. But they are still struggling under the oppression of the Shia militias. Prayer is essential -- and Archbishop Benedict hopes the West will see this and pray for his people."
Hano, 43, has led the Syriac Catholic Archeparchy of Mosul since 2023. The Syriac Catholic Church, overseen by the Lebanon-based Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan, is one of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with Rome. Its liturgical language, Syriac, is a dialect of Aramaic.
Syriac Catholics are believed to form the second-largest Catholic community in Iraq after the members of the Chaldean Catholic Church, another of the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches.
The icon that will be placed in Qaraqosh was painted by the Syriac Catholic Deacon Ibraheem Yaldo, from the nearby Iraqi town of Bartella.
Yaldo was forced to flee the town along with its other Christian residents in August 2014. Bartella's citizens lived in camps for internally displaced people in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, until the fall of ISIS.
The other six shrines to Mary, Mother of Persecuted Christians, are located at the Byzantine Chapel of Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyoming; St. John Guardian of Our Lady Parish in Clinton, Massachusetts; the Church of Saint Michael in New York City; The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory in London, England; Akalla Church in Stockholm, Sweden; and Our Mother of Perpetual Help Cathedral in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Yaldo also painted the icon at the shrine in Massachusetts, established in 2022 by Worcester's Bishop Robert McManus.
Nasarean.org, a 501(c)3 charitable organization based in Stowe, Vermont, hopes to inaugurate three more shrines by the end of 2026, its 10th anniversary year.
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