Quinto di Treviso - This evening there were about 140 people to listen Gewargis Sliwa, Metropolitan of Baghdad, in the auditorium of the parish church in Quinto di Treviso. The event was sponsored and organized by the parish priest Don Artemio Favaro and his valuable collaborator Don Philip, who acted as interpreter. Bishop Sliwa, returning from the Synod of the Eastern Churches just ended in Rome, spoke of the suffering that Iraqi Christians are experimenting on their own skin in the past seven years, when Western armies have invaded his country to free it from Saddam's dictatorship. Murders, bombings and kidnappings are commonplace and many Christian families have decided to leave Iraq to search - for instance in Canada - a better life and, above all, to escape the violence.
Bishop Sliwa started his "conversation" talking about the roots of his Church, which dates back to the late first century when Jesus Christ, still alive, sent in a city that was then Iraq's own disciple. Since then, Iraq has had strong Christian roots and the many missionaries have left their land, some of which arrived in China and Japan. Sliwa
Bishop also spoke of the relationship between Islam and Christianity, dwelling at length on the daily lives of Christians and their commitment to build peace in their country.
In private I have to ask the bishop Sliwa explanation is the possibility that Catholic priests in his diocese (they are of the Chaldean rite) have to be married, and on the socio-economic status of Christians.
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