Here's the A.P. story on the murder this weekend of Fr. Youssef Adel, a 47-year old Assyrian Orthodox priest. Adel was gunned down on a Baghdad street by unknown assailants using weapons equipped with silencers as the priest returned home with his wife from the market. She was not even aware that her husband had been attacked until he slumped to the pavement beside her.Adel was an engineer who became a priest only about six years ago. Friends described him as a compassionate man who preached love and peace. Adel was heavily involved in helping orphans and widows and other charities and he directed a religiously mixed school for Muslims and Christians at his church.
"We never expected today's ugly killing because the assassinated priest has no enemies at all," Archbishop Severius Hawa said.
Adel's murder follows that of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, one of Iraq's most senior Chaldean Catholic clerics, whose body was on March 13, two weeks after he had been kidnapped in Mosul.
(Note: Iraq's Assyrian Christians claim descent from the ancient Assyrians, whose capital Nineveh lies next to Mosul. Assyrians make up the majority of Iraqi Christians, speak Syriac and see themselves as a distinct ethnic group from Arabs and Kurds. Also, the above photo of Fr. Adel reading the Scripture as part of the church liturgy comes from by Allison Long/KRT via Zinda Magazine.)
