Pope prays for Iraqi people after bomb attacks on churches

Pope prays for Iraqi people after bomb attacks on churches

AP Worldstream
Dec 08, 2004

Pope John Paul II said Wednesday he was praying for the Iraqi people
after militants bombed two churches in Mosul, the latest anti-Christian
violence in the country.

“I express my spiritual closeness to the faithful, shocked by the
attacks,” John Paul said, speaking from his apartment window above
St. Peter’s Square on the Roman Catholic feast of the Immaculate
Conception.

He said he was praying that Iraqis “may finally know a time of
reconciliation and peace.”

In coordinated attacks Tuesday, militants bombed an Armenian Catholic
and a Chaldean church in Mosul, injuring three people. Islamic
militants have regularly targeted Iraq’s various ethnic communities,
including the minority Christians.