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Alqosh, Iraq, May 4, 2016 / 02:25 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After Islamic State militants broke through Kurdish army forces Tuesday, killing one American and three Kurdish fighters, local Christians voiced gratitude that the attack failed, but remain shaken and on edge should there be another assault.  

“The people of Alqosh and other cities nearby have been very afraid. But we thank God that this time the battle was won,” Fr. Ghazwan Baho told CNA.

Fr. Baho is the parish priest in Alqosh – the last major Christian city on the Plain of Nineveh not taken by the Islamic State. It sits roughly ten miles north of the Christian village of Telskuf, which was invaded by Islamic State militants in the early hours of May 3.

Telskuf had been seized by Islamic State in 2014, but was liberated by Kurdish army forces last year.

Islamic State's assault on the town yesterday marks the most recent attempt to gain back some of the territory lost due to the intervention of the Kurdish army, called the Peshmerga, and airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition.

Fr. Baho explained that the attack began at 3a.m., when about 20 car bombs “infiltrated beyond the line of Kurdish defense in Telskuf.”

“After a hard 15 hour battle that continued with the help of the Kurdish army coalition, they managed to free the Christian city at 6:00 in the evening,” he said.

Among the losses are one American soldier, Navy Seal Charles H. Keating IV, three Kurdish soldiers, and what Fr. Baho described as “dozens” of soldiers from the Islamic State. Additionally, three Christian soldiers from the Kurdish army were wounded, and are recovering in the hospital.

After receiving news of the attack, Christians in Erbil rallied to offer spiritual support for the residents in the area as well as the troops fighting.

Roni Marzina Momica, a young, recently ordained deacon for the Syriac Catholic Church in Iraq, led a women’s prayer gathering at Mariamana shrine in Ankawa, the Christian suburb of Erbil, just hours after hearing about the attack and the injured soldiers.

He told CNA that they had prayed specifically “for the Christians soldiers who were injured today because ISIS attacked Telskuf …that God would give them strength and power to come back and give them life.”

Their prayers were answered.

After having surgery late Tuesday night to remove the bullets they were shot with and to cure their other injuries, Deacon Momica said that today all of the soldiers “are doing good.”

Deacon Momica, who himself is displaced from Bakhdida (Qaraqosh), a city now in the hands of Islamic State, said that two of the injured soldiers are from the same city, and are friends of his.

The three wounded soldiers are Fouad Masoud, 48; Rafid Kahak, 27; and Wahab Ena, 18, who is also from Bakhdida.

His father is believed to still be in the city, though Islamic State militants seized it in August 2014. Ena has had no word from his father since, and doesn’t know whether or not he is alive, as Islamic State has not allowed anyone to leave since seizing the city.  

Deacon Momica recounted how in a phone conversation, Kahak told him that they were already inside Telskuf when Islamic State began their early-morning assault.

After being injured, he “began praying that God give the strength and power to get out...He didn’t want to stay in this place because if ISIS entered and caught him they would kill him,” the deacon said, explaining that Kahak carries a cross with him at all times, and had begun praying to God for help, when a plane arrived and carried them to safety.

Deacon Momica told CNA that he spoke with the soldiers after their surgery late Tuesday night “and they are good now. I even spoke with them five minutes ago, and they tell me they are good.”

However, while this battle has been won, the war is far from over, and Christians, especially in Alqosh, remain uneasy about what the future holds.

Since Alqosh is the only remaining Christian village on the Nineveh Plain, Fr. Baho said that if it falls, “that’s it” – Christianity in Iraq is finished.

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Washington D.C., May 4, 2016 / 04:51 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) has asked a federal court to reconsider its ruling forcing the company to comply with the revised HHS mandate, based on an admission by the federal government in its brief before the Supreme Court.

“The government admitted what we have said from the beginning,” said Michael Warsaw, CEO of EWTN. “Once you get past the bureaucratic smokescreen, this really comes down to one issue: the government wants to hijack our health plan. EWTN cannot let them do it.”

EWTN, the world’s largest religious media network, is one of hundreds of non-profits and charities suing the federal government over its mandate – and the revisions it made to the mandate – that requires employers to offer health plans including contraceptives, sterilizations, and drugs that can cause early abortions.

The government’s revision to the mandate was what it called an “accommodation” for non-profits who religiously objected to providing the coverage. The parties would send a notice of their objection to the government, who would then notify their insurer of the objection. The insurer would provide the contraception coverage separately.

In the current HHS mandate case before the Supreme Court, Zubik v. Burwell, a number of charities including the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Archdiocese of Washington have argued that sending their notice of objection to the government still constitutes tacit acceptance and facilitation of a morally-objectionable act, providing contraceptives for employees. They are basically acting as a “gatekeeper” for the objectionable coverage, they argued.

Furthermore, they say that the government is unconstitutionally “hijacking” their health plan, which is an agreement between them and their insurer, in forcing the unwanted coverage into the plan.

EWTN lost its initial case at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in February. A panel of judges ruled 2-1 that the government had indeed forced the network, under threat of heavy fines, to choose between its religious beliefs and participating with a morally-objectionable act in honoring the mandate.

Nevertheless, the judges ruled that the government was not imposing a “substantial burden” on EWTN’s religious beliefs by doing so. Federal law protects from government action that “substantially burdens” a person’s religious beliefs, unless that action is for a “compelling government interest” and is the “least-restrictive means” of furthering that interest.

The dissenting opinion in the ruling sharply disagreed, saying that the ruling “runs roughshod over the sincerely held religious objections of Eternal Word Television Network.”

Now EWTN wants the 11th Circuit Court to reconsider the decision. The Supreme Court, in a historically rare move in the middle of the case, asked both sides in the Zubik v. Burwell case to submit supplemental briefs outlining an alternative solution – if any – that would fulfill both parties’ interests of contraceptive coverage and religious freedom.

The government, in its supplemental brief, “essentially” admitted that it is “taking over” the health plans of the Little Sisters and other non-profits, Daniel Blomberg of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty told CNA. Since EWTN is a non-profit as well, the same standard would apply to its own case.

“The government’s been arguing all along that it’s not really forcing EWTN to do anything except sign some paperwork,” he said. Meanwhile, EWTN has said that the government is indeed “forcing” them to do something very significant, to “sign something that changes my health care plan, the plan that I administer and I stay involved with.”

The 11th Circuit had sided with the government that the revised mandate only asked EWTN to perform a task the equivalent of raising its hand, which was not a “substantial burden” on its religious beliefs, Blomberg explained.

Now, the government’s admission in the supplemental brief that it is intruding on health plans, he continued, acknowledges that “this is a hijack of a plan that forces [EWTN] to be involved -- as long as they’re providing health care, they’re involved in the government’s scheme.”

It is “something much more significant and something only EWTN can do, and that is create new legal responsibilities for their health care plan to start providing drugs that violate their faith.”

EWTN broadcasts to over 258 million television households in more than 145 countries and territories. It also broadcasts via satellite radio, internet radio and other media. Its publications include the National Catholic Register. Its news services include Catholic News Agency.

 

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Sedat Suna, EPA

By Simon Caldwell

MANCHESTER, England (CNS) -- Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster has welcomed a U-turn by the British government over the resettlement of child refugees.

He said he was "very happy" with a May 4 announcement by Prime Minister David Cameron that the U.K. will accept an unspecified number of unaccompanied children who arrived in the European Union from Syria.

Under pressure from Parliament, Cameron said the U.K. would not only take in 3,000 children from refugee camps in the Middle East, but that children registered in Greece, Italy or France before March 20, the date when an EU deal with Turkey to return migrants took effect, would also be eligible for resettlement in Britain.

The government will not take in migrant children who arrive after that date because it does not want to encourage human trafficking, the prime minister said.

In a May 4 statement, Cardinal Nichols, president of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, expressed satisfaction that the government had struck the right balance.

"I am very happy that the government is extending an offer of sanctuary to a greater number of children fleeing conflict, while continuing to combat the evils of human trafficking," said the cardinal.

"The U.K.'s response to the refugee crisis is improving the lives of thousands," he added. "I encourage the Catholic community to keep on playing its part through working with local authorities, being generous with time and resources, and extending the hand of welcome to refugees arriving here."

Days earlier, Cardinal Nichols had used a homily at an annual diocesan Mass for migrants to tell Catholics that they should protest against immigration policies that could put the lives of children at risk.

"While it is right to keep silent when children are asleep, it is never right to stay silent when they are perishing at sea or at risk in hostile camps," Cardinal Nichols said at the May 2 Mass.

"From those who deal in creating fear of migrant people and who seek to profit from that fear, whether financially or politically, we ask for a more responsible leadership, a leadership that looks at all that we gain as well as the problems we confront," the cardinal said.

Cardinal Nichols told the congregation that London "would not function" without the "great contribution" of its migrant communities. However, he suggested that new policies aimed at restricting immigration meant that the United Kingdom could not show greater hospitality to refugees even if its citizens wanted to.

In an allusion to the EU deal with Turkey to expel migrants, he criticized "international plans that often seem to treat people purely as problems or even as packages to be sent from place to place."

"We hope that the way in which governments respond to the immense challenge which faces us will take more seriously the personal generosity of so many, in this country, too, who are willing to welcome refugees and desperate migrants and yet are hindered from doing so by policies shaped more by caution and fear," he said.

"We hear reports of sadness, dismay, frustration, anger, rejection and humiliation: from Iraq and Jordan, to Libya and Calais," he continued.

"Yes, this is 'a vale of tears' as both the Mediterranean and the Aegean Seas become, in the Holy Father's words, graveyards for children, the elderly and their families," he said.

Last year, migration from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia resulted in more than a million people arriving in Germany alone.

At the Vatican, top officials of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences, known by the acronym CCEE, met with Pope Francis May 2 and heads of various dicasteries during their May 2-4 visit to Rome. The presidency members -- a president and two vice presidents -- were ending their five-year term this year.

Speaking to reporters May 3 at the Vatican, Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo of Esztergom-Budapest, CCEE president, said individual countries are facing the challenge of the immigration and refugee crisis. While the European continent as a whole must also come together to respond to the dilemma, each nation is in its own unique situation, which requires localized responses, he said.

"Therefore it's necessary to patiently and perceptively examine the situation of each region in order to find a concrete Christian-Catholic response to the situations," Cardinal Erdo said.

A blanket or mandatory solution is impossible, he said, not only because national laws are different, but because each nation faces a different challenge depending on whether it is a country of origin, transit or destination for refugees and forced migrants. So, for example, he said, a mandatory policy of integrating newcomers does not work if migrants do not want to stay in the so-called country of transit and to do so "would be a restriction on their freedom" to move.

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Contributing to this story was Carol Glatz in Vatican City.

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