Source: Taipei Times
Wire Service: AFP
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2007/06/11/2003364774
US President George W. Bush sought on Saturday to reassure Pope Benedict XVI over the plight of Iraq's minority Christians and also to mend fences with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi after months of bilateral tensions.
The pope "did express deep concern about the Christians inside Iraq," Bush told a news conference in Rome less than a week after a Chaldean priest and three deacons were murdered.
"I assured him we were working hard to make sure that people lived up to the Constitution" calling for religious tolerance, Bush said.
The murders in northern Iraq last Sunday were followed three days later by the kidnapping of another priest and five of his parishioners belonging to the Chaldean Catholic church, an Eastern rite with up to 700,000 followers.