Qaraqosh in Iraq is preparing to open one of only seven shrines worldwide dedicated to Mary, Mother of Persecuted Christians.
Newsroom (20/08/2025, Gaudium Press ) Eleven years after the Islamic State (IS) forced residents to flee this Christian-majority town, Qaraqosh, Iraq is preparing to open one of only seven shrines worldwide dedicated to Mary, Mother of Persecuted Christians. The shrine, housed within the newly constructed Church of Saint Ephrem, is set to be inaugurated in October, according to a Zenit report on August 15.
On August 6, marking the anniversary of the 2014 Christian exodus from Qaraqosh, Archbishop Benedict Younan Hano, leader of the Syriac Catholic Archeparchy of Mosul, received a hand-painted icon for the shrine. The icon, inscribed in Aramaic with “Mary, Mother of the Persecuted,” depicts the Madonna and Child. “The timing of this gift is deliberate,” Hano said. “It is a sign that faith endures… even in the very place where our largest Christian city was taken and desecrated.”
The shrine’s establishment carries profound symbolism for Iraq’s embattled Christian community, which has dwindled from 1.5 million in 2003 to approximately 150,000 today, largely due to wars, internal strife, and the IS occupation from 2014 to 2017. During that period, IS militants turned Qaraqosh’s churches into firing ranges and military outposts, issuing ultimatums to Christians across Mosul and surrounding areas: convert to Islam, pay a tax for non-Muslims, or face death.
The icon was painted by Syriac Catholic Deacon Ibraheem Yaldo of Bartella, a nearby town also ravaged by IS. Yaldo, who fled the 2014 onslaught and lived in displacement camps in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, until IS was ousted in 2016, previously created a similar icon for a shrine in Massachusetts, established in 2022 by Worcester Bishop Robert McManus. The gift was presented by Father Benedict Kiely, founder of Nasarean.org, a U.S.-based charity supporting persecuted Christians. Kiely, an English priest of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, called the Qaraqosh shrine “profoundly symbolic,” noting its location in a town once overtaken by IS.
Hano expressed hope that the shrine, alongside the six others in the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden, and Kazakhstan, will inspire Western Christians to pray for their persecuted counterparts. He also echoed Pope Leo XIV’s May 14 address to Eastern Christians, urging the West to remember the Church’s Eastern roots.
Despite the 2016 liberation of Qaraqosh by the Popular Mobilization Forces, a predominantly Shia Muslim militia coalition, local Christians continue to face challenges under militia influence. “Christians have returned, but they are still struggling under the oppression of the Shia militias,” Kiely told The Pillar. “Prayer is essential — and Archbishop Hano hopes the West will see this and pray for his people.”
Syriac Catholics, in full communion with Rome, represent Iraq’s second-largest Catholic community after the Chaldean Catholic Church. The Qaraqosh shrine stands as a testament to their resilience amid decades of persecution and displacement.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from UCAN News
Related Images:
