Bless this house: priests are becoming engineers to reconstruct homes in Iraq

From CNA: 

Priests in Iraq are helping reconstruct around 13,000 homes in the Plain of Nineveh which have been damaged or destroyed by ISIS so that Christians will have a place to come back to. To accomplish this, the Pontifical Foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has created a Commission for the Reconstruction of Nineveh. Besides celebrating Mass, the priests also serve as surveyors and obtain electric service and materials for the reconstruction of homes. The first work is being done in places that ISIS occupied for a short time and where there is not a lot of material damage. One of the members of this project is Fr. Georges Jahola, a Syrian Catholic priest from Qaraqosh. The priest told ACN that “here in Iraq if the Church doesn’t do these things, who’s going to do them? We have the capacity to act and do the talking, and also the contacts.” The reconstruction of the Plain of Nineveh includes five Chaldean Christian villages: Badnaya, Karamlesh, Telleskof, Bakofa and Telkef, located in the eastern part. Fr. Salar Boudagh, another member of this initiative, said that $7,000 is needed to renovate a lightly damaged home. To restore a burned home costs $25,000 and to reconstruct a totally destroyed home runs $65,000. “We have begun the reconstruction of Telleskof and Bakofa, because there damage to the homes is not too serious, as opposed to what is happening in Badnaya where 80 percent of the homes are destroyed,” the priest said.

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