A caravan leaving the city walls behind. Led by the Holy Family and a guardian angel who accompanies the journey of an entire people: priests, sisters, men, women, elderly and children, some wearing traditional costumes of the cities of Mosul and Qaraqosh. All this is represented in the copy of a painting given to Pope Francis by Fr. Rifat Bader, Director of the Center for Catholic Studies and Media in Amman and parish priest in Naour. The work was created by a refugee, "whose name—explains Fr. Rifat—"I cannot reveal because he fears for his life; but in the painting he has captured the whole tragedy that Mosul’s Christian community has undergone."
The priest gave the Pope a letter written by Christian families among the Iraqi refugees who have been living in the parish of Naour, Jordan, for the past few months. "They placed before us the choice of giving up being Christians or being killed," they say and then continue, "we had to flee from our lands with our Christ, with our faith and with our principles. We chose to go far away from our homes and our country that we love, preferring to become strangers in a foreign land, with all the pain and suffering this entails, rather than become part of that evil and inhuman violence against the innocent."
