"It is very encouraging to witness the faith of the community of Christians living in that enclosed space and also in the midst of a huge Muslim community majority," said Cardinal Nichols.

“We must help to heal the world of its moral atrophy,” the pope said at the World Meeting of Popular Movements.

More than 100,000 Christians from the area had already left. The archbishop of Mosul begged the remainder to flee, too.“They [Kurdish fighters] left us alone, and we were few in number with no weapons, and we could do nothing to face the Islamic State,” said Banni. “We ran.”A

Colombia’s Catholic bishops urged the government and armed rebels to commit to an indefinite cease-fire while a new peace deal is negotiated after voters rejected an agreement that would have formally ended the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running war. Following a meeting on Oct. 13-14,

Trying to impose the will of the United States on Iraq (and now Syria) took a deadly toll, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, destroying much of modern and ancient Iraq, sending into exile millions of refugees—and created ISIS.

The bishops said they were deeply concerned that a South African withdrawal will “influence and encourage other African countries to leave the court en masse.”