At one point, Mosul, Iraq, was home to more than 50,000 baptized Christians. Today, fewer than 70 Christian families live there. In his Sept. 24 message to diplomats and government officials in Vienna, Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, the patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, said that this decline in Mosul was part of a larger crisis that Christians are facing in the region. Sako noted that Christians in Iraq have faced many challenges during the past two decades, from war to religious extremism and systematic discrimination, which have all contributed to the sharp decline of Christians in this region.