‘It’s amazing to see people living the Christian faith — and especially when they don’t have to.” That’s what Chaldean Paul Thabet Habib Yousif Al Mekko of Alqosh, in Iraq, said to me during an interview two years ago this summer. A soft-spoken man, he knew why he and his people were following Christ. They were given an ultimatum by ISIS: convert or die. So they left their homes for wherever Christ took them. Bishop Thabet was instrumental in leading his people to a future with Christ, in a church rebuilt.
Just short of 50 years old, Bishop Thabet has now died, after a long respiratory illness that had been slowly wearing him down. He has been buried near his friend Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, who was martyred by Islamic extremists on the Sunday after Pentecost in 2007. It would be appropriate to consider them both icons of freedom.
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