Source: Beliefnet.com
Wire Service: UPI
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/151/story_15184_1.html
On August 26, 2004 United Press International reported, The designated Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican, Albert Yelda, appealed to his nation's Christian minority Thursday not to turn their backs on their country. Reached by telephone at his Baghdad office, Yelda pleaded with his co-religionists not to forget that 'we are the descendants of the original residents of present-day Iraq.' Referring to the bombing of five Iraqi churches earlier this month, Yelda insisted: 'This was the work of foreign terrorists. Iraq's Muslim leaders do not want us to leave. Christians enjoy their highest respect.' Yelda, who will take up his post in Rome as soon as the Vatican accredits him, estimated that 'less than 1 million' of his country's 23 million inhabitants are Christians. Yelda's appeal came in the wake of an exodus following the attacks on the churches, causing the death of a dozen Christians; 50 more were injured. As a result, some 40,000 members of different Christian denominations fled their homeland, according to Pascale Icho Wardo, Iraq's emigration minister."