Yet, despite Iraq receiving the United Nations highest emergency rating, too few leaders have heeded the U.N.’s urgent call for help. The United States and France are providing some weapons and military support, and France has offered asylum to thousands of Iraqi Christians who are fleeing for their lives. Many nations are sending money to buy emergency supplies for tens of thousands of terrorized Iraqis. Canada has added $5 million to a previous $16 million commitment and has offered token military backup. Much more is needed. 

In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Pope Francis urged the international community to intervene to ease Iraq’s “intolerable suffering” and “humanitarian tragedy.” Christians and members of other religious minorities, men, women and children, are being systematically massacred, raped, enslaved and robbed of their homes by radical Sunni Muslims who are intent on violently recasting Iraq and Syria into a fundamentalist Islamic state. Christians are being ordered to convert to Islam or die. Most simply flee. 

While he objects to unilateral U.S. military intervention to preserve Iraq’s 2,000-year-old Christian heritage, Pope Francis said U.N.-sanctioned force is justified to stop an unjust aggressor. He appealed to the international community “to do all that it can to stop and prevent systematic violence against ethnic and religious minorities.” 

A papal spokesman went further. Speaking on Vatican radio, the Holy See’s Permanent Observer to the United Nations in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, said that when peaceful avenues for justice fail, the UN Charter empowers nations to use “all the force that is necessary to stop this evil and this tragedy.” He called this “a moral imperative” to act. That moral imperative belongs not just to world leaders. It is shared by Christians everywhere who should feel righteous anger at the barbarism overrunning Iraq. We are all called to act. 

As Canada’s bishops have urged, Canadians should: pray for peace; demand our politicians speak out zealously to support a safe haven for persecuted minorities and cut red tape for Iraqi war refugees; and, finally, we must help relieve the suffering of war victims through donations to Catholic charities. 

So far this year some 1.5 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes. There is an urgent need for food, clean water, cooking materials, blankets, tents, medical supplies and many other essential items. An advertisement on page 10 of this paper explains how to support the heroic efforts of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association to provide shelter in the storm. 

The need is great and time is running out.