Pope Francis was able to appreciate in the Vatican a sacred book written in Aramaic, rescued from the invasion of the Islamic State in the city of Qaraqosh in Iraq, and which was recently restored in Italy.
This is the sacred book “Sidra”, written in Aramaic around the fourteenth or fifteenth century, which contains liturgical prayers for the feast of Easter and the Holy Cross.
The holy book belongs to the Syrian Christian Church of the city of Qaraqosh, on the plain of Nineveh, which the Pope will visit next March.
The meeting with a small group of restorers from the Federation of Christian Organizations for International Voluntary Service (FOCSIV) It was held on Wednesday, February 10 after the General Hearing.
The manuscript was rescued thanks to “the cunning of some priests of this city” in the face of the “iconoclastic and anti-Christian fury” of the Islamic State that invaded this land from 2014 to October 2016.
In January 2017 journalists Laura Aprati and Marc Bova found the holy book that was in Erbil, then it was delivered to the Archbishop of Mosul, Mons. Yohanna Butros Mouche, in the hands of FOCSIV volunteers.
The book was then moved to Italy for restoration which lasted about 10 months as it was in very critical condition, so a preliminary examination and linguistic comparison with some volumes of the book was required. same period preserved in the Vatican Apostolic Library.
Soon, the holy book will be returned to the Syrian Christian Church in Qaraqosh.
The president of the FOCSIV, Ivana Borsotto, stressed that “the recovery of the holy book Qaraqosh is part of the commitment that the Federation has dedicated to the reconstruction of the social fabric of a territory such as Kurdistan Iraqi and Iraqi “and added that the possibility that people on the plain of Nineveh will be able to continue singing in Aramaic with this book will remind everyone” that another future is still possible. “
Translated and adapted by Mercedes De la Torre. Originally published in ACI printing