One morning last March, Mgr Nizar Semaan got a phone call that in an instant would change his life forever. “Congratulations,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “You have been chosen to be Archbishop of Mosul.”
For Mgr Nizar, these words, uttered by Ignatius Joseph III Younan, Patriarch of Antioch and all the East for the Syriac Catholic Church, came as little less than a bombshell.
Syriac Catholics form part of Iraq’s mosaic of ancient Oriental Rite Christians decimated in mid-2014 after ISIS seized Mosul and forced the expulsion of minorities under threat of execution. The church bells fell silent for the first time in 1,800 years.
