A Yazidi family’s promise to protect a Christian sacred site

‘The church comes first’: A Yazidi family’s promise to protect a Christian sacred site

Despite being Yazidi, a religious minority that has suffered persecution in Iraq, Wael Jejo Khdeida, along with his wife, tends to Mar Odisho Church in northern Iraq without pay and treats it as sacred. / Credit: Ismail Adnan/ACI MENA ACI MENA,... [...]

A Yazidi family’s promise to protect a Christian sacred site

Despite being Yazidi, a religious minority that has suffered persecution in Iraq, Wael Jejo Khdeida, along with his wife, tends to Mar Odisho Church in northern Iraq without pay and treats it as sacred. / Credit: Ismail Adnan/ACI MENA ACI MENA, Jun 22, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA). Though Christians left the northern Iraqi village of al-Nasiriya decades ago, the doors of Mar Odisho Church remain open — thanks to the devotion of a local Yazidi family.Wa…

The Yazidi family that keeps Mor Odisho Church alive - Syriac Press

ALQOSH, Iraq — In a remote village in the Nineveh Plains of northern Iraq where no Christian families remain, the stone walls of Mor Odisho Church still echo with prayer — thanks to the quiet devotion of a young Yazidi man and his family. Wa’el Jejo, a Yazidi from the village of Nasiriya in the Chaldean-Syriac-Assyrian Alqosh subdistrict, holds the keys to the church — both literally and symbolically. Though Christians left the village decades a…