ASIA/IRAQ - Eight Iraqi churches on National Postal Service postage stamps

Wednesday, 30 September 2020 middle east   oriental churches   area crisis   citizenship   politics   migrants  

coptstoday

Baghdad (Agenzia Fides) - The Iraqi Postal Service has issued, for the first time, a series of stamps dedicated to celebrating the Country's churches. The series includes eight stamps, depicting historic churches of Iraq, located in various regions of the national territory and belonging to communities of different Christian denominations. The multicolored representations of the different churches are the work of Iraqi artist Saad Ghazi. The administration of the Iraqi Postal Service had a first set of 4,000 copies of the entire philatelic series printed and distributed in post offices.
The choice of the National Postal Service to reproduce churches on postage stamps is combined with other gestures of attention reserved by the current Iraqi political leadership to indigenous Christian communities. On 10 August, on meeting the Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako and some of his collaborators, Iraqi President Mustafa al Kadhimi expressed the hope that Iraqi Christians who emigrated abroad during the jihadist occupation of the north of the Country will soon return to Homeland. "Iraq", said Kadhimi on that occasion, "is the Country of all Iraqis, and Christians are the Country's original children". The President guaranteed the support of government institutions to Christian families, so that they can "return to Iraq and give their contribution to its reconstruction". (GV) (Agenzia Fides, 30/9/2020)


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