During this holy season, Christians turn their thoughts to that first Christmas and to the early Christians. This year, we should prayerfully reflect on the fact that those church communities founded by Thomas, Mark, Paul, Andrew, and the other disciples of Jesus, communities that have remained faithful for 2,000 years, are now suffering mightily for their faith.
The reason is religious persecution. Christians will always be persecuted, the Scriptures tell us, but the unbearable scope of this wave is due to burgeoning extremism within some Muslim sectors. It now poses an existential threat to Middle Eastern Christians - though it is not limited to the Middle East.
At an address this month in Rome before Georgetown University's Religious Freedom Project, Archbishop Louis Sako of Baghdad, the Chaldean Catholic patriarch of Babylon, expounded on this development.... Keep reading
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