Iraq will soon be without the Christian faith as approximately 20 Christian families desert the country each month [1], 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.