Iraqi television even skipped the Muslim midday call to prayer in order to keep transmitting the proceedings.
New cardinal Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of Iraq waves as he leaves at the end of a Consistory ceremony at the Vatican November 24, 2007. Pope Benedict, elevating 23 prelates from around the world to the elite rank of cardinal, made a pressing appeal on Saturday for an end to the war in Iraq and decried the plight of the country’s Christian minority. (REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi)
Iraqis take great pride in their new “National Symbol” -Cardinal Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly of Baghdad.
The Talisman Gate reported on the reaction in Iraq to this news:
Patriarch Mar Emanuel III Delli, the Baghdad-based head of the Chaldean Church, was ordained into the College of Cardinals by Pope Benedict XVI at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican today, and the whole event was carried live by Iraq’s national television station for well over an hour.
Al-Iraqiyya TV’s caption for the event was ‘The Symbols of Iraq’ and at one point the camera focused on a man in the audience holding up the Iraqi flag just as Cardinal Delli was named.
It was a very moving ceremony, and it was especially refreshing to find Iraq’s official media highlighting the event and describing the Chaldean patriarch as a national ‘symbol’. The channel even skipped the Muslim midday call to prayer in order to keep transmitting the proceedings, which were conducted in Latin but were translated into Arabic by a presenter.
This is the power of the New Iraq whereby a predominately Muslim nation takes pride in its Mosul-born son making it to one of the highest bodies of the Roman Catholic Church.
Hat Tip BG
Iraqi flags and a Senegalese flag are seen in celebration of the newly elevated Iraqi Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly and Senegalese Cardinal Theodore-Adrien Sarr during Pope Benedict XVI’s Angelus prayer in St.Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Nov. 25, 2007. Pope Benedict XVI urged his 23 new cardinals on Sunday to pray for peace in the world and unity among Christians, and be willing to give their lives for the sake of the Catholic Church. Benedict made the appeal during a Mass in which he placed a golden ring on the finger of each of the new cardinals, a symbol of their links to the papacy, that was embossed with an image of Christ’s crucifixion. The Mass capped a weekend-long ceremony to elevate the 23 new churchmen to the elite ranks of the College of Cardinals, where they will act as the pope’s principal advisers and, for those under age 80, the electors of a future pontiff. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Previously:
Pope Benedict XVI Establishes Cardinal of Baghdad
Hope and Reconciliation Pictured in Iraq
St. Johns in Baghdad Celebrates Its First Mass Since May
