Friday, December 28, 2007

Al-Aqiser Church - Iraq

One is reminded of the opening shots in The Exorcist: the old priest and archaeologist stands in ruins near Nineveh facing the concretization of the demon he will later battle for the life and soul of a little girl.

But here in a windswept desert in Iraq a different kind of battle is taking place. Al-Aqiser Church, one of the oldest in Christianity, lay waiting until a team of Iraqi archaeologists stumbled across its ruins in the 1970s. The battle is one of restoring it to its ancient glory.

"It is a place of worship, a church, and without doubt, the oldest church of the East," said Hussein Yasser, the head of the antiquities department of the province of Karbala.

"According to our research, it was build 120 years before the emergence of Islam in the region," Yasser said.

In time, Karbala overshadowed it and became a key Muslim Shiite pilgrimage destination, while across the region Christian communities began to recede.

[ ... ]

"The church was built facing Jerusalem," said Yasser, who has been struggling since 1993 to attract funds and interest to restore the church and carry out excavations in the area.

His efforts were briefly rewarded some years ago when the authorities agreed to finance a brief excavation that lasted six months.

[ ... ]

In the past Catholic Chaldeans, the largest single Christian denomination in Iraq who follow an eastern rite but recognise the Pope in Rome, used to pray in Al-Aqiser on Christmas Day but the faithful have not returned in a long time.

The church "is part of out country's memory, part of the great civilisation that the Iraqis have built and it must be saved," said Yasser. [HT: New Advent]

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