Today the Church remembers Ragheed Aziz Ganni, priest, and Basman Yousef Daud, Wahid Hanna Isho, and Gassan Isam Bidawed, deacons, martyrs.
Ora pro nobis.
Fr. Ganni (20 January 1972, Mosul, Iraq – 3 June 2007, Mosul) was a Chaldean Catholic priest. On June 3, 2007, Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost, he was killed along with three subdeacons including his cousin Basman Yousef Daud, Wahid Hanna Isho, and Gassan Isam Bidawed in front of Mosul’s Holy Spirit Chaldean Church where he was parish priest.
Ganni had just finished celebrating the Sunday evening Holy Qurbana (Mass). The three deacons had recently decided to accompany Ganni because of threats against his life. After Mass he was walking away from the church with Daud as Isho, Bidawed, and Isho’s wife followed by car; the group was stopped by unknown armed men. One of the gunmen shouted at Ganni that he had warned him to close the church and demanded to know why he didn’t do it. Ganni replied asking “How can I close the house of God?” The gunmen ordered the woman to flee. Then after the gunmen demanded that the four men convert to Islam and they refused the four were shot down. The car was then set with explosives to deter interference and so that the bodies would remain abandoned. Several hours passed until a police bomb-squad defused the devices allowing corpses to be recovered.
Thousands of people attended the funeral of the four men in Karemlash, Iraq on June 4, 2007. Ganni was secretary to Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Archbishop of Mosul of the Chaldean Church, Iraq’s largest Christian community. Rahho was murdered only nine months after Ganni’s death, in the same city of Mosul.
Almighty God, by whose grace and power your holy martyrs Ragheed, Basman, Wahid, and Gassan, triumphed over suffering and was faithful even to death: Grant us, who now remember him in thanksgiving, to be so faithful in our witness to you in this world, that we may receive with him the crown of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
