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After celebrating Sunday Mass, Fr Ragheed and his three aides were leaving the parish by car, accompanied by the wife of one of the sub-deacons, Gassan Isam Bidawed. In recent days the three insisted on accompanying Fr Ragheed to protect him. "They were young men alive with faith, who accompanied their parish priests every move, risking their lives for their belief in Christ," their friends [said]. Suddenly, at the corner of the road, their car [was] blocked by unknown armed men militants who ordered the woman to distance herself from the others and then, in cold blood, shot the remaining passengers, repeatedly. The aggressors then booby-trapped the car with explosives, with the aim of further carnage should anyone go near the car to recover the bodies. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the bodies remained, abandoned on the city street, because no one dared to approach. It was only towards ten p.m. (local time) that security forces finally defused the explosives allowing corpses to be recovered.

Wednesday, another Chaldean priest, Hani Abdel Ahad, was abducted in Baghdad. Earlier in the week, militants attacked and occupied a Chaldean convent. And Shiites have now joined radical Sunnis in demanding that Christian women in Baghdad wear veils. News agencies also report that Muslim groups are demanding "that Christians pay the jizya, the poll tax demanded by the Koran which all Christians and Jews must pay in exchange for being allowed to live and practice their faith as well as being entitled to "Muslim protection' from outside aggression."

Assyrian International News Agency further reports that Christian women are being forced into marriages with Muslims. It quotes Assyrian Patriarch Mar Addai II as saying, "Only the families that agree to give a daughter or sister in marriage to a Muslim can remain, which means that the entire nuclear family will progressively become Muslim."

Again, that's the news just from this week. The plight of Iraq's Christians is scheduled to be Pope Benedict XVI's top agenda item when he meets with President Bush on Saturday.

3. Prison Fellowship's Iowa InnerChange program faces July 1 shutdown
Following last year's controversial court ruling, declaring the Prison Fellowship's InnerChange Freedom Initiative at the Newton, Iowa, prison unconstitutional, Iowa lawmakers have dropped its $310,000 state funding. Prison Fellowship says it is close to finalizing private funding for the program, but Americans United for Church and State (which sued over the program) and state lawmakers say that may not be enough. Private funding "does not address some of the issues the judge found unconstitutional, including the preferential treatment of prisoners in the program, the delegation of authority to a religious group, the exclusive use of certain prison property by this program," Americans United's Barry Lynn told the Des Moines Register. Prison Fellowship apparently differs, and has some backing from Iowa House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Democrat. McCarthy told the paper he has concerns about the program (he seems to be rather negative about it) but says it should be able to continue if it's privately funded.

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June (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51