Canon Andrew White, the “Vicar of Baghdad,” knows firsthand the dire situation faced by Christians in Iraq. From Anglican Communion News Service:
The five-year-old son of a founding member of Baghdad’s Anglican church was cut in half during an attack by the Islamic State1 on the Christian town of Qaraqosh.
In an interview Aug. 8, an emotional Canon Andrew White told ACNS that he christened the boy several years ago, and that the child’s parents had named the lad Andrew after him.
“I’m almost in tears because I’ve just had somebody in my room whose little child was cut in half,” he said. “I baptized his child in my church in Baghdad. This little boy, they named him after me – he was called Andrew.”
Read more. A recent video interview with Canon White is posted at the Huffington Post as part of this report:
Canon Andrew White, also known as the “Vicar of Baghdad,” is the Chaplain of St George’s Anglican Church in Baghdad, Iraq. He estimates that his flock used to number around 6,000 people, but in the last decade over 1,200 have been killed, according to CNN’s Arwa Damon.
“One of things that really hurt was when one of the Christians came and said, ‘For the first time in 1,600 years, we had no church in Nineveh,'” he told Damon. White refuses to leave Baghdad, despite the danger, as St. George’s is Iraq’s last Anglican church.