Two Priests on ISIS

BOSTON AREA PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER

I work out of my studio in Groton, MA, shooting headshots, portraits & creative dance. I also work on location helping entrepreneurs with their personal branding photos, videos and websites.

Last Spring I traveled to the Nineveh region of Northern Iraq. This is the heart of Christianity in Iraq. They are close to extinction. Their numbers have dwindled from 1.5 million to 250,000*.

This video shows two priests describing living under the threat of ISIS.

You can see more of my photos in an ARCH blog post on my Beauty for Ashes exhibit and watch more of my interviews on my Nineveh Videos page.

*BBC News article “Iraq’s Christians ‘close to extinction’. Here is an excerpt:

In an impassioned address in London, the Rt Rev Bashar Warda said Iraq’s Christians now faced extinction after 1,400 years of persecution.

Since the US-led invasion toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, he said, the Christian community had dwindled by 83%, from around 1.5 million to just 250,000.”Christianity in Iraq,” he said, “one of the oldest Churches, if not the oldest Church in the world, is perilously close to extinction. Those of us who remain must be ready to face martyrdom.”

He referred to the current, pressing threat from Islamic State (IS) jihadists as a “final, existential struggle”, following the group’s initial assault in 2014 that displaced more than 125,000 Christians from their historic homelands.

“Our tormentors confiscated our present,” he said, “while seeking to wipe out our history and destroy our future. In Iraq there is no redress for those who have lost properties, homes and businesses. Tens of thousands of Christians have nothing to show for their life’s work, for generations of work, in places where their families have lived, maybe, for thousands of years.”