By Lisa Graas on December 14, 2010
One month has passed since the massacre of Catholic Christians by Islamists in Our Lady of Deliverance Church in Baghdad. As Christians throughout the world celebrate Advent, which represents the awaiting of the birth of the Christ Child, word is spreading of Adam, a little Catholic boy who, at the tender age of three years old, stood up courageously to the Muslim aggressors in the midst of carnage. Frances Cardinal George, the outgoing president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, included Adam’s story in his final remarks to the USCCB in November:
Now, at the end of last month, on the vigil of the feast of All Saints, in the Syriac Catholic Cathedral of our Lady of Deliverance in the city of Baghdad, many dozens of Catholics were killed as they gathered for Mass. Two were priests: one was killed at the altar and the other as he left the confessional. They are joined in death with hundreds of others who have died for their faith in Christ since the current conflict began. An American Dominican Sister, a friend of a friend, has written from that country: “Waves of grief have enveloped their world, surging along the fault lines created in Iraqi society by the displacement of thousands of Iraq’s Christian minority who have fled what is clearly a growing genocidal threat…One survivor was asked by a reporter, what do you say to the terrorists? Through his tears he said, ‘We forgive you.’…Among the victims of this senseless tragedy was a little boy named Adam. Three-year-old Adam witnessed the horror of dozens of deaths, including that of his own parents. He wandered among the corpses and the blood, following the terrorists around and admonishing them, ‘enough, enough, enough.’ According to witnesses, this continued for two hours until Adam was himself murdered.” As bishops, as Americans, we cannot turn from this scene or allow the world to overlook it.
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Tags: Media, Muslim, News Item, Religion, Terrorists
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Thanks for the link. I appreciate it.
This is one of those sad stories that need to be told. We hear instantly of a school shooting or some nut shooting up a school board meeting in the U.S. People should know about this.