July 2004 Christian soldier Greg Watts speaks to Fr Habib Al-Noufaly, a former member of Saddam Hussein’s army during Iraq’s war with Iran, who was ordained a Chaldean Catholic priest and now ministers to the Chaldean community in Great Britain The death threat came in the form a note pushed under the door of the parish house. Its request was stark: $10,000 or the church will be bombed. The threat was never carried out, but Fr Habib Al-Noufaly knows that it so easily might have been, given the lawlessness on the streets of Baghdad today. Earlier this year, 44-year-old Fr Habib left St George’s Chaldean parish in El Gadeer, south-east Baghdad, and flew from Amman to Heathrow to take up his appointment as chaplain to the UK’s Chaldean community. He follows in the footsteps of Bishop Andreas Abouna, who was appointed auxiliary bishop of Baghdad after 12 years in London. The threat to bomb St George’s church is indicative of the violence and chaos that currently grips Baghdad, which since the toppling of Saddam’s regime has become one of the most dangerous places on earth. Fr Habib took to carrying a pistol for protection, while drawing up a list of armed volunteers to guard the church 24 hours a day. ‘Every day, I prayed, “Lord, don’t let me shoot anyone.” Some people in my parish were killed by criminals who wanted their money. And a number of Christian doctors have been killed. My GP was killed because he had a new car. If you want to live in Baghdad you need to hide your bag, your new car, everything,’ he says. A disturbing development has been the rise in kidnappings. ‘When the sun goes down everyone stays in their home. Many rich families refuse to send their children to school because of kidnapping. Criminals kidnap children and then phone the father and ask for money. It might be $10,000, $100,000 or $1 million.’ During the US-led bombing of Baghdad last year, Fr Habib opened the hall of the church for families to take refuge in. People felt safe there, he says. ‘But more than 1,000 families in the parish left Baghdad during the war and fled to the north, where many originate from. ‘Two of the leaders of the local mosque came to visit me and thank me for assisting the Muslims in El Gadeer. We provided food, clothing and money. Many overseas Catholic and Anglican charities supported us.’ Fr Habib now lives in a flat in West Ealing, and is responsible for the pastoral care of around 500 Chaldean families, most of whom live in the London area. He celebrates Mass in the Chaldean rite, using both Arabic and Aramaic, each Sunday morning at St Anne’s church, a short distance from Euston Station, and occasionally in Cheam, Surrey. The Chaldean Catholic Church is the counterpart of the Assyrian Church of the East, sometimes known as the Nestorian Church, which broke with Rome after rejecting the teaching of the Council of Ephesus in 431. The Nestorians claimed that there were two separate persons in Christ, one divine and one human and refused to accept the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God. In the 16th century many Nestorians entered into communion with Rome and, in 1553, a patriarchate of the Chaldeans was created. There are now an estimated 500,000 Chaldeans in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, the US and Europe. Born in the village of Baqofah in northern Iraq, and one of eight children, he says that he felt called to the priesthood while a teenager. ‘I wanted to be a priest when I was at secondary school. We lived in a poor part of Baghdad, and I saw that there were very few priests. When I told my father, he said he didn’t want me to be a priest,’ he said. ‘One of my sisters had become a nun and he felt she had brought shame on the family.’ Instead, he went off to Mosul University to study geology. After graduating in 1982, he went to the military academy in Baghdad. By now Iraq was engaged in a bloody war with its neighbour Iran, and Fr Habib found himself serving on the front line. As a Christian, he felt it was the right thing to do, because he was serving his country. ‘I prayed the Chaldean office when I was at the front. I also listened to cassettes and read spiritual books. And I prayed the rosary all day. The Muslim soldiers were also praying. We were like brothers,’ he said. ‘At night we waited for the Iranians to attack. They always attacked after midnight. They would come on foot with rocket-propelled missiles. We used to become very tired, as the battles would often on for six or seven hours. ‘There were times during the war when I was very afraid. Once, a missile fell two metres from me. Another time, we climbed a mountain at night to find that the Iranians were on the top.’ Fr Habib left the army in 1992, once again feeling that call to priesthood he had felt as a teenager. But this time he was determined to test his vocation. He was accepted for studies at Babel Pontifical College and was ordained in 1998. He has quickly settled into life in London. He is attending a local college to improve his English and he has taken to marking places he has visited on a map in order to get to know his way around the capital. Eventually, he hopes to study a course in media. He is proud of Iraq’s Biblical roots. Formerly ancient Mesopotamia, and the centre of Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian civilisations, Iraq figures significantly in the Bible and, some say, it is the location of the Garden of Eden. Pope John Paul II had hoped to visit Ur, in south of the country, the birthplace of Abraham, as part of his Jubilee celebrations in 2000, but the Iraqi Government cancelled the trip. Fr Habib is praying for peace in his troubled homeland. But he knows that the longer the bombings and killings continue the harder that will be to achieve.