Archbishop Rahho of Mosul is dead. Yesterday, AsiaNews reported: Archbishop Faraj Rahho was kidnapped last February 29 after the Stations of the Cross. His kidnappers gave word of his death, indicating to the mediators where they could recover the body of the 67-year-old prelate. (...) Leaders of the Chaldean Church, including Bishop Shlemon Warduni, brought the body to the hospital in Mosul to ascertain the causes, still unknown, of the archbishop's death. The funeral will be held tomorrow in the nearby city of Karamles. Archbishop Rahho will be buried near Fr Ragheed, his priest and secretary killed by a terrorist brigade on June 3, 2007, while leaving the church after celebrating Mass." What meaning could one give to this senseless death? Personally it posed a very difficult question - does God still listen to the prayers of his people? Who is this man, anyway, for whom we prayed? Again from Asianews: "For his little flock, the prelate still represented "hope". The faithful recount to AsiaNews that the bishop had always said "that he wanted to remain in Iraq until the end, even if this meant death". His presence was an act of "resistance against terrorism and violence". Born in 1941, Faraj Rahho was a seminarian at the patriarchal seminary of Saint Simon. He then became the pastor of the church of Mar Elia. After a brief period of studies in Rome, he returned to Iraq. There, in the 1980's, he became the leader of the newly founded parish of St Paul in Mosul, until he was appointed as an archbishop in 2001. In 1989, he founded the Fraternity of Charity and Joy, with the aim of assisting sick people and guaranteeing them love and a dignified life. He also worked hard on behalf of young people. In the 1990's, when Iraq was under embargo, he instituted the "Youth Week", a successful initiative that later became a pastoral outreach for the entire diocese.
On the other hand, his death, tragic as it is, could also be read as a "successful resistance" considering the conditions posed by the kidnappers. Sources told Asianews: (...) in addition to an outrageous ransom on the order of millions of dollars, they had also included the provision of weapons and the liberation of Arab prisoners held in Kurdish prisons.
I don't want to minimize the suffering of the Bishop and the Christians (all of us, in fact) who have participated and are still intimately participating in this "drama" of the faith community of Iraq, but I also read in the Bishop's death, his full participation in our Lord's Paschal Mystery, a sure proclamation that God is in-charge of history -- not the terrorists!
