TWO churches in Mosul were reconsecrated last week, on completion of reconstruction efforts that followed the occupation of the Iraqi city, from 2014 to 2017, by the so-called Islamic State (IS).

St Thomas’s, also known as Mar Toma, is a Syrian Orthodox church which dates to the seventh century, according to a report in Vatican News. Also now reopen is the 18th-century Al-Tahira Chaldean Catholic Church.

During Islamic State’s occupation of Mosul, St Thomas’s was used as a prison

Work to repair damage carried out under the occupation has been supported by the Aliph Foundation, and the French and Iraqi governments.

L’Œuvre d’Orient, a French RC charity focused on serving Christians in the Middle East, was also involved in the project. The director of the charity, Mgr Hugues de Woillemont, said that “church bells will ring out once more”.

AlamyThe reopening ceremony at St Thomas’s Syriac Orthodox Church, on Wednesday of last week

Vatican News also quoted Fadi, a Christian from Mosul, who trained for three years before working on the project, as saying that the restoration was a “sign of hope”.

He helped to restore the 13th-century Gate of the Twelve Apostles, in St Thomas’s. The restoration, he said, showed Iraqi Christians who were living abroad that “things are better here now, that they can move back home.”

The Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon, Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, speaking on EWTN News Nightly, also said that the reopening of the churches was a “sign of hope”.

Cardinal Sako attended the reconsecration service St Thomas’s, which has been called the “Mother of Syriac Churches”, alongside the Syriac Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, Mor Ignatius Aphrem II. “Terrorism may destroy stones, but it cannot break the spirit of a people rooted in their faith and homeland,” the Syriac Patriarch said.