WASHINGTON - The conflict in which Islamic State fighters are driving out Christians and other minorities must not be seen as a war between Islam and Christianity, said the head of the Vatican Congregation for Eastern Churches.

OTTAWA - Religious leaders, including two Imams, denounced the barbarism of the Islamic State and urged the protection of Iraqi Christians and other minorities during a Parliament Hill rally on Sept. 6. 

TORONTO - Mahir Aboudi’s aging mother and father — on the run from the Islamic State and holed up with thousands of refugees in Irbil, Kurdistan — can’t join their son and his family in Canada as refugees because they haven’t yet crossed an international border, Conservative cabinet member Jason Kenney told Aboudi and his family. 

MIAMI - Pope Francis sent a letter of condolence to the family a Steven Sotloff, the second U.S. journalist slain this summer by ISIS, also known as Islamic State.

MANCHESTER, England - Christina Khider Abada was seated beside her mother, Ayda Abada, on a bus when captors from the Islamic State snatched her three-year-old daughter and took her away.

ROCHESTER, N.H. - In April 2013, the parents of slain U.S. journalist James Foley attended a prayer vigil at Marquette University in Milwaukee to pray for their son, who at that time had disappeared in Syria.

MANCHESTER, England - A group of 11 sick, disabled and elderly Iraqi Christians — including an 80-year-old woman with breast cancer — defied terrorists who ordered them to convert to Islam or be beheaded, saying they preferred death to giving up their faith.

A coalition of more than 50 U.S. religious leaders, led by mostly conservative Catholic, evangelical and Jewish activists, is calling on President Barack Obama to sharply escalate military action against Islamic extremists in Iraq. They say “nothing short of the destruction” of the Islamic State can protect Christians and religious minorities now being subjected to “a campaign of genocide.”

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican called on Muslim leaders to condemn the "barbarity" and "unspeakable criminal acts" of Islamic State militants in Iraq, saying a failure to do so would jeopardize the future of interreligious dialogue.

OTTAWA - Canadian Catholic charitable agencies have put out urgent appeals for assistance to help Iraqi Christians fleeing for their lives from Islamist extremists from the Islamic State (ISIS}.