Sad News from Iraq

This is the reaction of someone who truly believes his church faces extermination.  Incredibly tragic:

...Archbishop Athanasios Dawood slammed the Iraqi government for not doing enough to protect the rights of minorities and urged Christians to quit the country.

"I say clearly and now -- the Christian people should leave their beloved land of our ancestors and escape the premeditated ethnic cleansing. This is better than having them killed one by one," said Dawood, according to prepared remarks he sent to CNN.

Speaking at a service in London, he also asked the British government, and those in other European countries, to grant asylum to Christians living in Iraq.

"The Iraqi government is weak, biased, if not extremist. It does not protect us and the other minorities. It has ignored our legal rights. We ask the British government, the EU and the U.N. to protect us," he said.

"I ask the British government again to help the Iraqi Christians and grant them the rights of humanitarian asylum in order to preserve what is left of the victims who do not carry a weapon to fight and kill," said Dawood.

His call came a week after the brutal siege on a Baghdad church...

For more on the Church in the Middle East, see John Allen's excellent reporting on the synod of the Middle Eastern bishops which recently concluded.