On a sunny afternoon in this quiet city in northern Iraq, a young veiled Muslim woman from Baghdad kneels to pray—at a Catholic church.
The church keeper, a woman also from Baghdad, enters the sanctuary and welcomes the visitor.
“Don’t worry, pray in your own way,” she tells the visitor.
The Muslim woman removes her shoes and kneels before a statue of Mary, then lights candles offered to her by the church keeper. Before leaving, she lights several more candles and, through tears, says, “It’s just so hard.”
Walking the visitor to the gate, the church keeper says, “You’re always welcome here. This is your home.”
With the images of sectarian violence having dominated news from Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003, the appearance of a Muslim woman praying at a Christian church might seem unusual. But Muslim and Christian Iraqis say they lament the increasing segregation of their neighborhoods and villages along religious lines. When a mosque or a church is attacked, both communities mourn.
“Anyone can come and pray here, even Muslims. There’s no difference. It’s one God,” said Father Ayman Aziz Hermiz of St. Joseph Chaldean Catholic Church in Sulaimani. The community is home to a large percentage of the 1,300 Christians families who fled north after the bombing of a Syrian Catholic church in Baghdad in November.
Read the full feature at American Catholic
Image: Whispers in the Loggia