Fr Ragheed Ganni

Ragheed Aziz Ganni, priest: born Mosul, Iraq 20 January 1972; ordained priest 2001; died Mosul 3 June 2007.

Ragheed Ganni, a Chaldean Catholic priest, had just finished celebrating Sunday evening Mass in the Holy Spirit parish in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul when gunmen stopped his car. Before opening fire on him and his three deacons (one of them his cousin), the killers demanded their conversion to Islam. They then shot the four repeatedly.

Although the first Catholic priest to be killed since 2003, Ganni was by no means the first Christian leader in Iraq to be targeted for execution. As the Islamist intolerance of Christians rose steadily in recent years and months, Ganni had several times been on the receiving end of threats and attacks. His church had most recently been bombed on 27 May. The three deacons had decided to accompany him to and from his church in a vain attempt to protect him.

Highly educated, well-travelled and just 35, Ganni was an up-and-coming priest and secretary to Paulos Faraj Rahho, the local bishop of the Chaldean Church, Iraq's largest Christian community. He also had a fine singing voice. His studies in Rome at the Pontifical Irish College had given him an international perspective, a knowledge of six languages and a great love of Ireland, almost a second country for him. Indeed, he was known as "Paddy the Iraqi".

But after completing his studies in 2003, Ganni had chosen to return to his homeland soon after US-led forces had ousted Saddam Hussein. "That is where I belong, that is my place," he had told his friends.

Ganni was born and grew up in northern Iraq. After graduating in engineering from Mosul University in 1993, he decided to train for the priesthood. Seeing his promise, his bishop sent him in 1996 to Rome to the Irish College, and he gained a licentiate in Ecumenical Theology from the Angelicum University. He was ordained priest in the Chaldean Rite in 2001, but remained in Rome to complete his studies for another two years. In homage to Irish spirituality - and to earn some money during the seminary holidays - Ganni had worked during several summers at the Catholic shrine at Lough Derg in Donegal.

Ganni was at first optimistic over his country's future after the ousting of Saddam. But by 2004 life was becoming difficult. The worsening situation for Mosul's Christians led Ganni last year to delay his planned return to Rome to begin a doctorate. His most recent messages were despairing. "We are on the verge of collapse," Ganni told the Catholic agency Asia News a week before his murder.

In a sectarian and confessional Iraq, will there be any space for Christians? We have no support, no group who fights for our cause; we are abandoned in the midst of this disaster. Iraq has already been divided; it will never be the same. What is the future of our Church? Today it can barely be traced.

Felix Corley