Fundraiser set to help Christians in Iraq

Courtesy photo

+ Enlarge

SALT LAKE CITY — “We must not resign ourselves to thinking of the Middle East without Christians, who for 2,000 years have confessed the name of Jesus.”  – Pope Francis

The Knights of Columbus St. Ambrose Council 15418 are hosting a fundraiser dinner to collect funds to help Christian people return to their biblical roots on the plains of Nineveh, joining a national effort to aid the faithful in the Holy Land.

The Karamles, Iraq Project of the Knights of Columbus Council 15418 came to life due to an article published in the November issue of the Knights of Columbus magazine Columbia.

The article profiled families whose memories from home and peaceful times in Iraq in the ’70s have been replaced with terror and horror at the recent events such as bombings, murders and persecution. In the summer of 2014, ISIS evicted members of minority religious communities from their homes in Karamles, which was a predominantly Christian town. Then, last year, the Nineveh Plain was liberated from ISIS.

“People have been displaced from there and they want to live back in their homes,” said Richard Hall, Grand Knight at St. Ambrose Parish in Salt Lake City.

The national Karamles initiative was launched during the Knights of Columbus’ 135th Supreme Convention in St. Louis, at which members of the international fraternal Catholic organization planned to raise $2 million “to save a Christian town on the Nineveh Plain, ensuring that hundreds of Christian families driven from their homes will return,” reads Columbia magazine.

This effort is similar to one launched by the government of Hungary, which donated $2 million to help 1,000 families return to Teleskov, another predominantly Christian town, according to Columbia magazine.

To help with the resettlement and rebuilding of Karamles, the Knights will partner with the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil, Iraq, according to Columbia magazine.

The overall project is to rebuild 1,000 homes at a cost about $2,000 per home, “so what we decided to do was put together a project locally, to rebuild at least two homes that we can sponsor through our council at Saint Ambrose,” Hall said.

To help with that effort, the St. Ambrose Knights Council is inviting everyone to a fundraising dinner to take place on April 7.

“We are going to have a variety of meats and a dessert option in which we are going to let tables bid on different choices to choose what dessert that they want,” Hall said.

 At the dinner, “we are planning to have a mother/son couple that were from this town,  but they were displaced from Iraq. They are coming and giving us their testimony, as they were given 24 hours to get out of their village or be killed,” Hall said.

“Since 2014, the Knights’ Christian Refugee Relief Fund has donated more than $13 million for humanitarian assistance primarily in Iraq, Syria and the surrounding region. The Knights’ documentation of ISIS’ atrocities and advocacy on behalf of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East were decisive in the 2016 decision of former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to declare as genocide the treatment of Christians and other religious minorities in the region,” Columbia magazine states.

WHAT: Fundraising dinner for Iraq rebuilding project

WHEN: Saturday, April 7,  social at 6 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m.

WHERE: St. Ambrose Social Hall, 2315 Redondo Ave., Salt Lake City

Catered by Sugar House Barbecue

Tickets required to be purchased by April 1. Contact Dick  Hall, rhall5323@gmail.com or 801-891-9792.