Archbishop kidnapped in Iraq

In my post of 21 February I wrote about Palestinian Christians living in fear.

Catholic News Service had a story yesterday on the kidnapping of Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul, Iraq. You can find the story here. The archbishop's three companions were killed. Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni and subdeacons Basman Yousef Daoud, Wadid Hanna and Ghasan Bida Wid were killed June 3 outside the same church.
Please pray for the safe return of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho.

H/T to Father Tim Finigan.

The link above to Father Ragheed has a video of his funeral with a recording of him signing a hymn to our Blessed Mother in Arabic. Most of the Christians in the Middle East are Arabs and their Christian origins go right back to the time of the Apostles.

While studying in Rome, Father Ragheed stayed in the Irish College where he was known to the priests and seminarians as 'Paddy the Iraqi'. He also spent some time as a staff member at St Patrick's Purgatory (Lough Derg), Ireland, during the summers of 1997 to 2003. The website there has a page about him. His funeral Mass was celebrated by the kidnapped archbishop.