Mossul: the bells of Mar Toma ring the return of Christians to the Nineveh Plain

In the city devastated by ISIS, the re-consecration of the Syriac-Orthodox church of Mar Toma marks a step in the slow return of Christian communities to the Nineveh Plain.

The fact

On July 20, 2026, La Croix reports from Mosul the ringing of the bells of the Mar Toma church, a Syriac Orthodox sanctuary turned into a prison under the Islamic State and re-consecrated to worship in October 2025. The city, which fell into the hands of ISIS in June 2014 and was later liberated in July 2017 at the cost of a devastating urban battle, had several thousand Christians of various rites before the war: Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, Chaldean, and Armenian. Almost all had fled to Iraqi Kurdistan or taken the path of exile.

Our reading

This return is not a pure architectural restoration. It is an act of fidelity to the land evangelized according to the apostolic tradition by Saint Thomas, sanctified by nearly twenty centuries of Syriac liturgical life. In the Nineveh Plain, the Œuvre d'Orient and Aid to the Church in Need support the reconstruction of places of worship, schools, and homes of all Christian communities, Catholic and Orthodox; the Syriac Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch and the Chaldean Patriarchate of Babylon encourage the return of families, while the non-Catholic Churches work towards the same goal with their own pastors. The process remains slow: security is not guaranteed everywhere, economic reconstruction is slow. Aid to the Church in Need recalls in its successive reports that the survival of Eastern Christianity requires constant material and spiritual support. Open Doors keeps Iraq in its 2026 World Watch List among the high-risk zones for Christians. The bell of Mar Toma is a fragile but real signal: the suffering Church of the East is not extinguished.

To ponder

The Church of the West cannot content itself with compassion: it must support concretely, through prayer, through aid, through pilgrimage, those who reopen a door closed by violence. Each bell that rings again in Mosul, Catholic or Orthodox, is a reminder of our own fidelity.