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An election victory for Iraq’s more secular, less sectarian parties backing Prime Minister-elect Ayad Allawi isn’t tempting Iraqi Christian refugees to return home, even as members of the Chaldean Church hierarchy continue to express confidence that Christians can live in peace in Iraq.

“It’s very, very difficult to turn back to Iraq, impossible to turn back,” Toma Georgees told The Catholic Register in his apartment in the Geremana neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria. “Our problem is not with the Iraqi government. Our problem is with Iraqi people, ignorant people who want to kill us, who want to kill all the Christians... Those people are ignorant, and they just want to drink our blood as Christians.”

You don’t need to know a word of old Syriac or Aramaean, not a word of Arabic. You don’t need to know the stories of kidnappings, death threats or the desperate flight to the border. You don’t need to know how these people have lived for years in exile on borrowed money, tea, sugar and bread.

From the moment you walk into a church filled with Iraqi refugees in Syria or Lebanon their faith, their devotion, their steadfast love of God is as real, as concrete, visible and tangible as the walls of the church.

Beirut / Damascus - In 2006 there was an explosion at the church where Zuhaila Mikha’s husband used to help out. Ramzi was killed. Then in July, 2007 Mikha’s 19-year-old daughter was kidnapped. After two months of asking police and hospitals for information about her daughter she got word from her neighbour: “Let your neighbour know she should not go to the police or we will kill her.”

She moved from Mosul to the nearby Christian village of Tel Eskoff. But after nine months trapped in the village — running out of money, afraid to go to the city, afraid to let her children out of her sight — it was time to get out of Iraq.

TORONTO - Well-known capital punishment opponent Sr. Helen Prejean, C.S.J., will be giving the inaugural lecture honouring the prison ministry of the late Fr. Martin Royackers, who was murdered in Jamaica nine years ago.

Royackers was 41 when he was gunned down in front of his parish in Annotto Bay, Jamaica.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Students from Toronto’s Don Bosco High School are helping to commemorate the historical bond between Canadians and the Dutch people in a new monument celebrating the 65th anniversary of Holland’s liberation from the Nazis.

Don Bosco Catholic High School teacher Tim Stewart wrote the English and Dutch text accompanying a 1.2-metre tall, 900-kg black granite memorial that will be unveiled April 13 at Queen Wilhelmina Park in Meppel, Holland. The text speaks of the Toronto Scottish Regiment’s contribution to the liberation of Holland as the Second World War ground to an end.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Putting to rest rumours that Loretto Abbey is going to close, the Toronto Catholic District School Board says it plans to buy the Catholic high school property from the Loretto Sisters.

Angelo Sangiorgio, the board’s associate director of planning and facilities, told The Catholic Register that the board’s lease with the Loretto Sisters, also known as the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, expires in 2013.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The 12th annual Catholic Principals’ Council of Ontario conference will highlight the vocation of Catholic school principals across the province.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Embracing Our Catholic Vocation.” The conference runs from April 22 to 24 in Windsor, Ont.

Council president Paul Lacalamita said principals are “invested” in the faith formation of their community.

{mosimage}RABAT, Malta  - There have been many famous shipwrecks throughout history, but few can be credited with starting a nation on the path to Christianity. That’s exactly what happened in the Mediterranean island nation of Malta, however, an event the Maltese celebrate each Feb. 10.

Today, Malta is one of the world’s most thoroughly Roman Catholic nations, with 98 per cent of the population counted as adherents. Of those, 53 per cent say they regularly attend Mass.

{mosimage}April 2, 2005. They were incredible scenes that I shall never forget. Hundreds of thousands of young people streamed into St. Peter’s Square . . . and wept openly before the body of an old man who was not a rock star, Olympic medalist or Hollywood icon. He was an elderly Pope who had just endured a public death before the eyes of the world.

On April 8, millions of people gathered in churches, halls, fields, public venues and schools across the Earth — many well before the crack of dawn — to watch the funeral of someone who told them to serve others before satisfying themselves.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Politics is at play in the so-called “Pius wars,” the debate surrounding Pope Pius XII’s likely canonization, says renowned Jewish studies scholar Michael Marrus.

Although the controversy has been framed as a struggle between Christians and Jews, Marrus said he also sees the issue as “an internal debate in the Catholic Church.”