“U.S. Dominican Women Give Report on their Visit as Delegates to Sisters of Iraq”

From the Dominican Sisters of Adrian

February 20, 2019, Adrian, Michigan – Three U.S. Dominican women gave a report during a February 17 webinar on their experiences as a delegation to the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Iraq. Adrian Dominican Sisters Rose Ann Schlitt, OP, and Nancy Jurecki, OP, and Gloria Escalona, a member of the Dominican Laity, spoke of their November visit to the Sisters, who returned to their homes on the Plains of Nineveh. They had been expelled from these homes in August 2014 by the arrival of fighters of the Islamic State and lived in internal displacement in Northern Iraq with thousands of other refugees. Members of the delegation provide background on these events and on the destruction and ruin of homes and churches that the Sisters discovered upon their return home. The webinar was facilitated by Sister Patricia Farrell, OP, Executive Director of the Dominican Sisters Conference.

Watch the webinar and scroll to two minutes from the beginning of the video, where the actual presentation begins. In the early part of the webinar, reference is made to the Most Reverend Mar Barnaba Yousif Habash, Bishop of the Syrian Catholic Church in the United States. However, the man pictured in the presentation is Bishop Yohanno Petros Moshe, Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Kirkuk, and Kurdistan in Iraq.