Iraq will soon be without the Christian faith as approximately 20 Christian families desert the country each month, according to Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako.

Iraq was once home to more than one and a half million Christians.

Pervasive persecution, at times amounting to genocide, has seen millions of Christians in the Middle East killed, kidnapped, uprooted, imprisoned and discriminated against.

It has taken a toll on the survival of the oldest Christian communities in the world, located in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.

A century ago, Christians comprised 20 percent of the population in the Middle East, but currently, the region is home to less than 4 percent or roughly 15 million Christians.

More than 500,000 Christians left Iraq due to the sectarian conflict that started with the self-styled caliphate of ISIS in 2013. Earlier, the 2003 US-led invasion had wreaked havoc on the oil-rich country.