Persecuted Christians finally getting noticed

quote:

---

Amnesty International has admirably agitated for Meriam Ibrahim's release, but partly on grounds of Amnesty's opposition to the death penalty. Even many Christian churches in the West seem to be too constrained by ethnic sensitivities to assert themselves on behalf of their persecuted brethren. They haven't paid much attention to the near-extermination of the ancient Christian communities in Iraq during the past decade of turmoil, or to the systematic destruction of Coptic churches in Egypt by Islamic radicals in 2013.

---

quote:

---

Meriam Ibrahim did manage to gain the attention and sympathy of the West by reason of her courage, her beauty, her status as a mother of two young children and the extreme circumstances of her case. If there are parallels between her experience and a story of ancient martyrdom, the lesson might be that the West's cultured classes' hostility to Christianity, like that of their of Roman forbears, results in a passivity that tolerates attacks on people whose only crime is their faith.

---

quote:

---

Mariam Yehya Ibrahim, the Sudanese Christian woman sentenced to death in Sudan because of her faith, arrived in Rome on Thursday, the Italian Foreign Ministry said.

​

Now their dream of starting a new life in the United States appears to be on the verge of becoming reality.

---

quote:

---

During the meeting Thursday, which lasted about half an hour, Ibrahim thanked the Pope for his and the Roman Catholic Church's support and prayers, the Vatican said.

​

He, in turn, thanked Ibrahim and her family for their "courageous witness and constancy of faith."

​

Francis also played with the children, 18-month-old Martin and 2-month-old Maya, and greeted the Italian diplomats involved in her journey to Italy.

---