Pope Francis was presented with the historic manuscript of prayer saved by the Islamic State

He was presented to Pope Francis Wednesday with a historic Aramaic prayer manuscript saved from the destructive occupation of northern Iraq by the Islamic State. Dating from a period between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the book contains liturgical prayers in Aramaic for Easter in the Syriac tradition. The manuscript was previously stored in the Great Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception of Al-Tahira (pictured below), the Syrian Catholic Cathedral of Bakhdida, also known as Qaraqosh. The cathedral was sacked and set on fire when the Islamic State took control of the city from 2014 to 2016. Pope Francis will visit Bakhdida cathedral on his next trip to Iraq from 5 to 8 March. The book was discovered in northern Iraq in January 2017 by journalists - when Mosul was still in the hands of the Islamic State - and sent to the local bishop, Archbishop Yohanna Butros Mouché, who entrusted it to a federation of Christian NGOs for the custody. Like Bakhdida's Immaculate Conception Cathedral itself, the manuscript has recently undergone a thorough restoration process. The Central Institute for the Conservation of Books (ICPAL) in Rome oversaw the restoration of the manuscript, financed by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage. The 10-month restoration process involved consulting with experts from the Vatican Library, which has Syriac volumes dating from the same period. The only original element of the book that was replaced was the thread that binds it together.

Pope Francis received a small delegation in the library of the Apostolic Palace on 10 February. The group presented the restored liturgical text to the Pope. The delegation included the head of the ICPAL restoration laboratory, Archbishop Luigi Bressan, the retired archbishop of Trento, and the leader of the Federation of Christian Organizations in International Voluntary Service (FOCSIV), the Italian federation of 87 NGOs that helped ensure the safety of the book when it was found in northern Iraq. During the meeting with the pope, FOCSIV president Ivana Borsotto said: "We are in your presence because in recent years we have saved and restored in Italy, thanks to the Ministry for Cultural Heritage, this 'refugee book' - a book sacred of the Syro-Christian Church of Iraq, one of the oldest manuscripts preserved in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in the city of Qaraqosh in the plains of Nineveh ”.

“Today we are happy to symbolically return it to His Holiness to return it to his home, to his Church in that tormented land, as a sign of peace, of brotherhood,” he said. A spokesperson for FOCSIV said the organization hopes the pope will be able to take this book with him during his apostolic visit to Iraq next month, but cannot say at this time if it will be possible. "We believe that in bringing the refugees of Kurdistan back to their cities of origin, as part of the action of development cooperation and international solidarity, it is also necessary to rediscover the common cultural roots, those that over the centuries have woven a history of tolerance and peaceful coexistence in this area ”, said Borsotto after the hearing. “This allows us to recreate the conditions that can lead the population to a new cohesive and peaceful collective and community life, especially for these people for whom the long period of occupation, violence, war and ideological conditioning has deeply affected their hearts. "" It is up to cultural cooperation, education and training projects to rediscover their traditions and the millenary culture of hospitality and tolerance of the entire Middle East ". Borsotto added that, although the final pages of the manuscript remain severely damaged, the prayers contained in it "will continue to celebrate the liturgical year in Aramaic and will still be sung by the people of the Nineveh Plain, reminding everyone that another future is still possible ".