Members of the minority say they have little faith in promises by Iraqi police and politicians that Rahho’s murderers will be discovered.

“Mosul is a cradle of fundamentalists, and the government cannot control the whole quarter,” Archbishop Sako said.

Yet despite their uncertain position, church leaders said they were encouraged by the large number of Muslim religious leaders who called on the Christians to offer their condolences for Rahho’s death.

“We try to stay here and love like Jesus Christ,” Father Mikhail said. “We try to give this meaning of our Christianity, that love and life are better than death and killing.”

Sidebar: Archbishop Rahho - A Full Life Cut Short

The body of Archbishop Paulus Faraj Rahho, 65, was found buried in a shallow grave in Mosul on March 13, two weeks after he was kidnapped and held for ransom.

Rahho was leaving his Holy Spirit parish in the city’s al-Nur district when his car was cut off by several vehicles containing armed men. The attackers shot and killed the archbishop’s driver and two bodyguards before driving off with the clergyman.

A leader with a shepherd’s heart for his flock, Rahho spent most of his life working to serve Christians in Mosul, the biblical city of Nineveh and traditional home of Iraq’s Christians.

At a commemoration mass in Rome held on March 14, Father Amer Najman Youkhanna of Mosul’s Chaldean archdiocese testified to the witness of the archbishop, who refused to abandon the city of his birth even as it descended into chaos following the 2003 U.S. invasion.

“His example was one of the main points that made me discover my vocation to the priesthood,” Youkhanna said in a homily published by Baghdad Hope website.

Born in Mosul on December 20, 1942, Rahho was the youngest of eight children. Studying first in Mosul and then in Baghdad, Rahho completed his theological studies in Baghdad at the Chaldean Patriarchate’s minor seminary and was ordained on January 10, 1965.

After earning a license in pastoral theology in Rome in 1976, he returned to Mosul where he would live out the rest of his days. He built St. Paul’s church in Majmoaa Thakaifya, a new residential area of Mosul, and it was there that he applied his passion for the disabled, founding several organizations to care for the handicapped.

Ordained archbishop of Mosul on February 16, 2001, Rahho took leadership of the archdiocese just before his flock entered a time of intense persecution. Following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Mosul became a hotbed of Sunni extremism, prompting many Christians to flee the city.

On December 7, 2004, Rahho was forced out of his archbishop’s home by armed men and watched as the structure was set ablaze. After his right-hand priest, Father Ragheed Ghanni, was murdered near the Holy Spirit church on May 3, 2007, Rahho spoke out more strongly about the persecution of Christians in his country.

Despite numerous threats from anonymous groups calling themselves “Mujahedin,” the archbishop refused to leave Mosul and encouraged his flock to stay.

Speaking to the deceased Rahho at the end of his homily in Rome, Fr. Youkhanna recalled words the archbishop had spoken.

“You always said, ‘I was born in Mosul, and I want to die in Mosul,’ and so, now you get the crown of martyrdom,” the priest said. “You have been a true example of the good shepherd who gives his life for his flock.”

Copyright 2008 Compass Direct News