Douglas Joseph Shimshon Al-Bazi (or Doglas Yousef Al Bazi, born 1972 in Baghdad) is a Chaldean Catholic Church parish priest in

Auckland Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about ...

, New Zealand, as the leader of the Chaldean Catholic congregation there. He formerly served in

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

Baghdad parish priest

Al-Bazi was vicar of the St. Elia (alt: Elias) Catholic Church, and the adjacent St. Elia Catholic School in the "working class"

New Baghdad New Baghdad or Baghdad Al-Jidida ( ar, بغداد الجديدة) is one of nine administrative districts in Baghdad, Iraq. This district has nine Neighborhood Advisory Councils (NAC) and a District Advisory Council. It is located east of the city c ...

neighborhood of Baghdad. By 2010, the school had an 82 percent Muslim enrollment, as a result of the exodus of Christians from Iraq. In his autobiography, Norman Kember relates that Al-Bazi described his church as having been bombed ineffectively by unidentified anti-Christian elements and as a church where members of several denominations worshiped together. According to

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the church was attacked twice in the year before Father Douglas was kidnapped; the Father was shot during one of the attacks. Father Douglas fled from Baghdad, his hometown, to Erbil in 2013.

2006 kidnapping

In November 2006 Father Douglas was kidnapped by an Islamist group. He was tortured and released nine days later. He suffered multiple injuries including two broken

vertebra The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates, Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristi ...

e from his

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, and his face and knees were smashed using a hammer. An Ak-47 bullet still remains in his leg. He was released after the Chaldean Catholic Church paid $170,000 in ransom for the release of al-Bazi and Father Samy Al Raiys by their kidnappers.

Refugee camp priest

Al-Bazi is known for sheltering hundreds of Christian war refugees who escaped from the ISIL conquest expansion in August 2014 to Mar Elia Church in Erbil, Iraq where he is the parish priest, and founder and manager of a refugee camp. Father Douglas built the refugee camp in part of the church property previously furnished with benches and used as a small garden, now it is a refuge for Christians fleeing persecution in ISIL-dominated regions of Iraq. Many of the refugees are from

Qaraqosh Qaraqosh, also known as Al-Hamdaniya or Bakhdida, is an Assyrian city in Iraq within the Nineveh Governorate, located about 32 km (20 mi) southeast of the city of Mosul and 60 km (37 mi) west of Erbil amid agricultural lands, close ...

. The camp, which is located in the predominantly Christian Ankawa neighborhood of Erbil, boasts prefabricated housing units, a library, and an emphasis on education. Funding has come predominantly from

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. By November 2014, Mar Elia, which hosts about 700 refugees, was one of six churches in Erbil sheltering about 3,000 Christian families. Al-Bazi described the ethnic cleansings being carried out by ISIL in 2015 as "genocide". In September 2015, the

Knights of Columbus The Knights of Columbus (K of C) is a global Catholic fraternal service order founded by Michael J. McGivney on March 29, 1882. Membership is limited to practicing Catholic men. It is led by Patrick E. Kelly, the order's 14th Supreme Knight. ...

released for national broadcast in the U.S. a television commercial featuring Father Douglas in the hope of encouraging more Americans to donate money for the relief of Christian refugees. In the commercial, al Bazi asks viewers to "pray for my people, help my people, and save my people" saying that, "genocide is the easy word for what is happening to my people."

Anti-Christian genocide in the Middle East

Father Al-Bazi has spoken out against the genocide of Christians by ISIL.

New Zealand

In 2016 Fr. Al-Bazi moved to

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

where he became parish priest at St. Addai Chaldean Catholic Church, in Papatoetoe. He continues his political activism on behalf of Christians in the Middle East.

References