Patrick Martin
The giant cross, framed by a sweeping arch, can be seen for blocks peering out from above the two- and three-storey buildings in the Baghdad neighbourhood of Karada.
"Christians live here," it seems to say, or at least they once did.
The modern-looking Church of Our Lady of Salvation is one of a vanishing number of Christian institutions in war-torn Iraq. The invasion of the radical Islamic State movement has destroyed churches and monasteries and greatly accelerated the decline of Christian numbers, a drop that began in 2004.
"The Church is finished in Nineveh," said a resigned Yousif Abba, Archbishop of the Syrian Catholic Church in Baghdad, referring to the western part of Iraq around the city of Mosul that recently was overrun by IS forces. "I don't think people will ever go back."
Bishop Abba's own birthplace is there, in Qaraqosh, a town just outside Mosul that is home to 50,000 Assyrian Christians. It fell to IS in August, when Kurdish peshmerga were unable to hold their ground and the people fled to the Kurdish capital of Erbil.
Bishop Abba, 63, makes his base at Our Lady of Salvation but, from 1997 to 2011, he was pastor of Saint Joseph Syriac Catholic Church in Mississauga.
Today he says that, though his own and other Christian congregations are in free fall, he expects to be the last to leave this country, despite the Canadian citizenship he acquired during his years in the Toronto area. "I can't leave my people," he said, "though I understand completely why they are going.
"The situation has become intolerable," he argues, noting that just two days ago a convent in Mosul was blown up by Islamic State. Last week, two archdioceses in the city were destroyed, bringing to four the number in ruins.
The number of Christians in Iraq has plummeted from about 800,000 at the start of the year to perhaps 300,000 now, he said. Just a decade ago, the 1.5 million Christians amounted to 5 per cent of Iraq's population.
While Saddam Hussein was no saint, religious minorities seemed relatively safe during his time. "No one dared touch a Christian," the Bishop said. "Now we have Islamic State as well as gangsters abducting our people or killing them."
Preparing to give the last rites to a Church that has been in Iraq for 2,000 years – since the apostles Thomas and Thaddeus came through here in the first century – is no easy matter. Bishop Abba, seemingly weighted down by the large silver cross that hangs from his neck, approaches it gingerly.
The Vatican urges Christians to stay, governments such as Canada's and Australia's urge them to stay, even Iraq's new Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi urges them to stay, he notes.
"But how can I do this?" he asks. "It's become unconscionable."
Four years ago, Our Lady of Salvation was attacked by some 15 terrorists in one of the first signature moves by the Islamic State of Iraq. ISI, as it then was known, dismissed the church as a "dirty den of idolatry."
Over a four-hour ordeal, two priests and 45 parishioners were killed – some by execution, others in the blasts of suicide bomb vests. A gun battle left 12 police dead as well.
We told the people to stay then, the Bishop said. And the church was refurbished.
Large photos of the two murdered priests look in from either side of the altar, and the names of the 45 parishioners are written in stained windows with Arabic calligraphy. Other windows of stained glass form stars in the sky.
Bishop Abba's fervent wish is that countries such as Canada will do more to safeguard the remaining Christians – either by establishing some kind of international protection for those on the ground in Iraq, or by opening their doors to Christian refugees.
During the 1975-90 civil war in Lebanon, Canada created such a program and many thousands of Lebanese Christians took advantage of it.
Today, the Bishop said, there are tens of thousands of displaced Christians in Kurdish northern Iraq – as well as about 6,000 in Jordan and 4,000 in Lebanon – all waiting to move somewhere else.
Bishop Abba is on his way Sunday to say mass for the ones in Amman, en route to Rome for a conference with Pope Francis where he will raise the issue of what to do with the last of Iraq's Christians.