By George J. Marlin

In the summer of 2014, Yohana Al-Zebbaree was a 12-year-old boy when his world turned upside down. From his home in Duhok, a city in northern Iraq, he recalls the whispers spreading across neighborhoods, saying that ISIS was moving closer.

"There was this huge scare," says Al-Zebbaree, now 23. "I remember the night when they said that ISIS was approaching the northern cities, like Erbil and Duhok. Everyone was watching the news, and we got multiple phone calls from our relatives telling us to leave town and go further north."

While Erbil and Duhok never fell, Mosul - the second-largest city in Iraq with almost 2 million inhabitants and just a short drive away - was taken. And the Nineveh Plain, with Mosul as its regional capital, home to some of Iraq's most ancient Christian communities, was overrun. Hundreds of thousands fled, swelling Erbil's refugee camps. Churches became shelters; classrooms turned into dormitories; streets filled with families who had left everything behind but their faith.

The Christians who lived in the provincial capital of Mosul on the Nineveh Plain - in ancient times the City of Nineveh - have ancestors whose roots go back to the very beginning of Christianity. The region had been the traditional home of Assyrian Christians and gave birth to the monastic movement. But on June 11, 2014, the city's Chaldean Catholic Archbishop, Emil Nona, announced that the last Christians had fled the city.

Describing reports of attacks on churches and monasteries, Archbishop Nona said: "We received threats … [and] now all the faithful have fled the city. I wonder if they will ever return here…. My diocese no longer exists; ISIS has taken it away from me."

Open Doors, a religious freedom advocacy group, agreed with the archbishop. "This could be the last migration of Christians from Mosul," its representative said. "The Islamist terrorists want to make Iraq a 'Muslim only' nation and as a result they want all Christians out."

Amid this chaos, the Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil, led by Archbishop Bashar Warda, recognized that those refugee families needed more than shelter and food. They needed education, both religious and secular, and hope for the future. In 2015, the Catholic University in Erbil (CUE) opened its doors as Iraq's first private non-profit university.

Next week, as the university graduates its fifth class, it will also celebrate its 10th anniversary - a milestone born of resilience and faith in the face of what once seemed overwhelming odds.

CUE's first academic building was funded by the Italian Bishops' Conference. Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), a papal charity, followed with funding for new wings for the study of subjects such as architecture and medicine, and the provision of laboratories and a modern library. Between 2018 and 2019 alone, ACN-USA contributed more than $1.8 million.



An educational initiative that began in hope with only eleven students has grown to more than 760. About 65 percent of the student body now studies on full scholarships, most of which are funded by ACN.

And today, the Christians of Iraq are reaping the fruits of that carefully targeted generosity. The entire people of Iraq will as well. For a community that now accounts for less than 1 percent of the population, because of years of persecution, Iraq's Christians can and must have significant influence on the direction of the nation. CUE is providing a major contribution to that war-torn country in that regard.

While CUE is rooted in the Catholic tradition, its doors are open to all. About 60 percent of its students are Christian, 30 percent are Muslim, and the rest belong to smaller groups such as the Yazidis. In a country where religious and ethnic divisions often run deep, the campus offers a rare example of daily coexistence and common purpose.

"When you go to the villages, you see the Christians on one side and Muslims on the other," says John Smith, a university trustee. "But at the ...