Douglas Al-Bazi | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Douglas Joseph Shimshon Al-Bazi 1972 (age 51–52) |
| Occupation | Priest |
Douglas Joseph Shimshon Al-Bazi (or Doglas Yousef Al Bazi, born 1972 in Baghdad) is a Chaldean Catholic Church parish priest in Auckland, New Zealand, as the leader of the Chaldean Catholic congregation there. He formerly served in Baghdad, Iraq.
Al-Bazi was vicar of the St. Elia (alt: Elias) Catholic Church, and the adjacent St. Elia Catholic School in the "working class" New Baghdad neighborhood of Baghdad. [1] [2] By 2010, the school had an 82 percent Muslim enrollment, as a result of the exodus of Christians from Iraq. [1] In his autobiography, Norman Kember relates that Al-Bazi described his church as having been bombed ineffectively by unidentified anti-Christian elements and as a church where members of several denominations worshiped together. [3] According to Zenit News Agency the church was attacked twice in the year before Father Douglas was kidnapped; the Father was shot during one of the attacks.
Father Douglas fled from Baghdad, his hometown, to Erbil in 2013. [4]
In November 2006 Father Douglas was kidnapped by an Islamist group. [5] He was tortured and released nine days later. He suffered multiple injuries including two broken vertebrae from his spinal cord, and his face and knees were smashed using a hammer. [6] [1] [7] [5] An Ak-47 bullet still remains in his leg. He was released after the Chaldean Catholic Church paid $170,000 in ransom for the release of al-Bazi and Father Samy Al Raiys by their kidnappers. [6] [2] [8]
Al-Bazi is known for sheltering hundreds of Christian war refugees who escaped from the ISIL conquest expansion in August 2014 to Mar Elia Church in Erbil, Iraq where he is the parish priest, and founder and manager of a refugee camp. [6] [9] [10] [11] Father Douglas built the refugee camp in part of the church property previously furnished with benches and used as a small garden, [12] now it is a refuge for Christians fleeing persecution in ISIL-dominated regions of Iraq. Many of the refugees are from Qaraqosh. [4] The camp, which is located in the predominantly Christian Ankawa neighborhood of Erbil, boasts prefabricated housing units, a library, and an emphasis on education. [10] [13] Funding has come predominantly from Canada. [7] By November 2014, Mar Elia, which hosts about 700 refugees, was one of six churches in Erbil sheltering about 3,000 Christian families. [14]
Al-Bazi described the ethnic cleansings being carried out by ISIL in 2015 as "genocide". [15]
In September 2015, the Knights of Columbus released for national broadcast in the U.S. a television commercial featuring Father Douglas in the hope of encouraging more Americans to donate money for the relief of Christian refugees. In the commercial, al Bazi asks viewers to "pray for my people, help my people, and save my people" saying that, "genocide is the easy word for what is happening to my people." [16]
Father Al-Bazi has spoken out against the genocide of Christians by ISIL. [17]
In 2016 Fr. Al-Bazi moved to New Zealand where he became parish priest at St. Addai Chaldean Catholic Church, in Papatoetoe. He continues his political activism on behalf of Christians in the Middle East. [18]
Nineveh or Ninawa Governorate is a governorate in northern Iraq. It has an area of 37,323 km2 (14,410 sq mi) and an estimated population of 2,453,000 people as of 2003. Its largest city and provincial capital is Mosul, which lies across the Tigris river from the ruins of ancient Nineveh. Before 1976, it was called Mosul Province and included the present-day Dohuk Governorate. The second largest city is Tal Afar, which has an almost exclusively Turkmen population.
Ankawa is a suburb of Erbil in Kurdistan Region, Iraq. It is located 8 kilometres (5 mi) northwest of downtown Erbil. The suburb is predominantly populated by Christian Assyrians, most of whom adhere to the Chaldean Catholic Church.
Bartella is a town that is located in the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq, about 21 kilometres east of Mosul.
Iraqi Assyrians are an ethnic and linguistic minority group, indigenous to Upper Mesopotamia. They are defined as Assyrians residing in the country of Iraq, or members of the Assyrian diaspora who are of Iraqi-Assyrian heritage. They share a common history and ethnic identity, rooted in shared linguistic, cultural and religious traditions, with Assyrians in Iran, Turkey and Syria, as well as with the Assyrian diaspora elsewhere. A significant number have emigrated to the United States, notably to the Detroit and Chicago; a sizeable community is also found in Sydney, Australia.
Assyrians in Syria also known as Syriacs are an ethnic and linguistic minority that are indigenous to Upper Mesopotamia, the north-eastern half of Syria. Syrian-Assyrians are people of Assyrian descent living in Syria, and those in the Assyrian diaspora who are of Syrian-Assyrian heritage.
Minorities in Iraq have been incredibly influential to the history of the country, and consist of various ethnic and religious groups. The largest minority group is the Kurds, with Turkmen following shortly after. Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Assyrians constituted a population of 1.5 million, and belonged to various different churches such as the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, and the Syriac Orthodox/Catholic Churches. Other minority groups include Armenians, Mandaeans, Baha'i, among others.
Catholics in Iraq follow several different rites, but in 2022, most (82%) are members of the Chaldean Catholic Church; about 17% belong to the Syriac Catholic Church, and the remainder are primarily Armenian, Greek and Latin-rite Catholics.
The Assyrian homeland, Assyria, refers to the homeland of the Assyrian people within which Assyrian civilisation developed, located in their indigenous Upper Mesopotamia. The territory that forms the Assyrian homeland is, similarly to the rest of Mesopotamia, currently divided between present-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. In Iran, the Urmia Plain forms a thin margin of the ancestral Assyrian homeland in the north-west, and the only section of the Assyrian homeland beyond the Mesopotamian region. The majority of Assyrians in Iran currently reside in the capital city, Tehran.
The Christians of Iraq are considered to be one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world.
Chaldean Catholics, also known as Chaldeans, Chaldo-Assyrians or Assyro-Chaldeans, are an ethnoreligious group of Assyrians who follow the Chaldean Catholic Church, which originates from the historic Church of the East.
British Assyrians are British people of Assyrian descent or Assyrians who have British citizenship.
Assyrians in Lebanon, or Assyrian Lebanese, are people of Assyrian descent living in Lebanon. It is estimated that there are approximately 30,000 Assyrians currently residing in Lebanon, primarily in Beirut and Zahlé. This number includes the descendants of Assyrian genocide survivors who fled Iraq, Turkey, and Iran between 1915 and 1934.
According to the most recent government statistics, 97% of the population of Iraq was Muslim in 2010 ; the constitution states that Islam is the official religion of the country.
In the 2010 Baghdad church massacre, six suicide bombers of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) militant group attacked a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad during Sunday evening Mass, on 31 October, 2010, and began killing the worshipers. ISI was a militant group which aimed to overthrow the Iraqi federal government and establish an Islamic state in Iraq.
Louis Raphaël I Sako is a Chaldean Catholic prelate who has served as Patriarch of Baghdad since 1 February 2013. Pope Francis made him a cardinal on 28 June 2018.
The persecution of Christians by the Islamic State involves the systematic mass murder of Christian minorities, within the regions of Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique and Nigeria controlled by the Islamic extremist group Islamic State. Persecution of Christian minorities climaxed following the Syrian civil war and later by its spillover.
Bashar Matti Warda is a Chaldean Catholic cleric and the current Archbishop of Erbil.
The Timeline of the War in Iraq covers the War in Iraq, a war which erupted that lasted in Iraq from 2013 to 2017, during the first year of armed conflict.
In early 2014, the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant captured extensive territory in Western Iraq in the Anbar campaign, while counter-offensives against it were mounted in Syria. Raqqa in Syria became its headquarters. The Wall Street Journal estimated that eight million people lived under its control in the two countries.
Pope Francis's visit to Iraq took place between 5 March and 8 March 2021. The visit was accorded on following an invitation of the Government of Iraq and the Chaldean Catholic Church. The visit was remembered as an attempt to mend bridges between the different faiths in Iraq. During this first ever journey to Iraq by a Pontifex, Pope Francis visited the cities of Ur, Baghdad, Najaf, Qaraqosh, Erbil and Mosul.