A new shrine dedicated to Mary, Mother of Persecuted Christians, will open this October in Qaraqosh, northern Iraq — 11 years after ISIS forced the town’s Christian population into exile.
Luke Coppen’s article for The Pillar explains that the shrine, to be located in the recently built St. Ephrem Church, will be the seventh of its kind worldwide. Its centerpiece is an icon presented on August 6 to Archbishop Benedict Younan Hano, head of the Syriac Catholic Archeparchy of Mosul, by Fr. Benedict Kiely, founder of the Vermont-based charity Nasarean.org.
The date marked the anniversary of the mass flight of Qaraqosh’s Christians in 2014, as ISIS advanced from nearby Mosul.
“Having a shrine in the very place ISIS desecrated and destroyed churches is profoundly symbolic,” Fr. Kiely told Coppen.
He recalled visiting the area in 2018 and seeing bullet holes where militants had used a church for target practice. “Now, Christians have returned. But they are still struggling … Prayer is essential.”
The icon, painted by Syriac Catholic Deacon Ibraheem Yaldo, bears the inscription “Mary, Mother of the Persecuted” in Aramaic, a language still spoken by Christians in the Nineveh Plains. Yaldo himself was displaced when his hometown of Bartella was overrun in 2014.
A message to the West
Archbishop Hano expressed hope that the shrine will not only strengthen the local community but also remind Christians in the West to pray for their persecuted brothers and sisters. He emphasized that it should also awaken awareness of the Church’s Eastern roots, a theme highlighted by Pope Leo XIV in a May address to Eastern Catholics.
Iraq’s Christian population has dwindled from an estimated 1.5 million before 2003 to about 150,000 today, due to war, persecution, and emigration. Qaraqosh, once the largest Christian town in Iraq, was liberated from ISIS in 2016, allowing families to slowly return and rebuild.
The shrine in Qaraqosh joins six others in the United States, England, Sweden, and Kazakhstan. Three more are expected to be inaugurated by 2026, the 10th anniversary of Nasarean.org. For the Christians of Qaraqosh, who continue to rebuild amid hardship, the shrine is a prayer in paint and stone that their faith, once driven underground, will remain unbroken.
