MANCHESTER, England - Iraqi Christian refugees braved temperatures as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit to demand that the United Nations intervene to protect them from persecution by Islamist militants.

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a statement July 22 denouncing the persecution of Iraqi Christians.

VATICAN CITY - Backed up by death threats and property seizures, the expulsion of the entire Christian community from Mosul is "a crime against humanity," said an archbishop from Mosul.

Updated 07/22/14

VATICAN CITY - As the last Iraqi Christians in Mosul fled the city, Pope Francis urgently called for prayers, dialogue and peace.

WASHINGTON - Iraqi-American Catholic leaders, who have persistently advocated for the embattled Christian minority in Iraq, are now going to bat for a smaller ethnic group that likewise traces its origins to the troubled region.

Updated 07/16/14

AMMAN, Jordan - Two Iraqi nuns and three orphans kidnapped in late June have been released safely, according to the Christian rights group Middle East Concern.

OTTAWA - The Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) has put out an urgent plea for help aiding Iraqi Christians targeted in a “brutal civil war.”

AMMAN, Jordan - The patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Baghdad called the current situation in his country "perhaps the darkest and most difficult period in (the Church's) recent history."

AMMAN, Jordan - Thousands of Iraqi Christians who fled recent shelling by extremist militants and sought refuge in the neighboring autonomous Kurdistan region are now returning home, said a Catholic archbishop responsible for their care.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis expressed his fears over increasing violence in Iraq and prayed for peace, security and reconciliation in the country.

AMMAN, Jordan - The fall of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, to Islamist militants in early June sent half a million residents scurrying for safety, but Christians from the city say they were targeted long before Iraqi security forces abandoned the major political and economic hub.

BEIRUT - Church leaders in northern Iraq struggled to find shelter for Christians who were among hundreds of thousands who fled Mosul, the country's second-largest city, after Islamist forces took over much of the town, a Chaldean Catholic archbishop said.

AMMAN, Jordan - A steady stream of Iraqi refugees, smiling and displaying purple index fingers, emerged from a polling station in the Hashemi Shamali district, where the majority of these urban refugees live in the Jordanian capital.

WASHINGTON - Attending the installation of Patriarch Louis Sako as the new leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Baghdad, Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, looked around at the large crowd gathered in St. Joseph Cathedral and what he saw gave him a sense of hope.

VATICAN CITY - Iraqi Catholics fleeing physical danger in their homeland often find themselves unprepared for the moral threats awaiting their families in the United States, said the head of Chaldean Catholics in the Western U.S.

Seeing a lack of respect for the unborn, altered definitions of marriage and a general disregard for Christian values means Chaldean Catholic families settling in the United States often find themselves in a world they are not at all accustomed to, Chaldean Bishop Sarhad Y. Jammo of the Eparchy of St. Peter the Apostle of San Diego told Catholic News Service May 17.