There have been Christians in Iraq since the time of the Apostles, and they preserve their traditional worship in ancient churches and monasteries. Most Iraqi Christians still speak a modern form of Aramaic (the language of Jesus).
In 2003, around 1.5 million Christians lived in Iraq. Now that number has been reduced to 275,000.
Starting in June 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) and aligned forces began a major offensive in northern Iraq and captured the city of Mosul and many towns in the plains of Nineveh, causing the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Christians from their historic homeland. Most of them fled to the Kurdistan region and arrived in the territory of the Chaldean Archdiocese of Erbil. Since that time they have lived in refugee camps.
