Chalice shot by ISIS militants to be displayed in Spanish churches
The purpose of displaying the chalice during Mass, Aldea said, is to make visible to the people of Malaga the religious persecution that many Christians suffer today, and that has existed since the early days of the Church. “With this, we want to make visible a reality that we sometimes see on television but we are not really aware of what we are seeing.”
As part of an effort to remember and pray for persecuted Christians, several churches in the Diocese of Málaga, Spain are displaying a chalice that was shot by the Islamic State,-ACN reported.
The chalice was rescued from a Syrian Catholic church in the town of Qaraqosh on the Nineveh plain in Iraq. It was brought to the Malaga diocese by the papal charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) to be displayed during Masses offered for persecuted Christians.
“This chalice was used by the jihadists for target practice,” explained Ana María Aldea, an ACN delegate in Malaga. “What they did not imagine is that it would be re-consecrated and taken to many parts of the world to hold Mass in its presence.”
“When you see this chalice with the bullet’s entrance and exit, that’s when you become aware of the persecution that Christians are suffering in these places,” Aldea said.
In 2016 the European Union, the United States and Great Britain declared the Islamic State’s targeting of Christians and other religious minorities to be a genocide.
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