Weeping Christians bury Iraqi archbishop

Christians in Iraq enjoyed full religious rights and protection under Saddam Hussein.

The patriarch of Iraq's Chaldean Catholic church, Emmanuel III Delly, tearfully urged Christians on Friday not to seek revenge for the death of the archbishop of Mosul, whose body was found in a shallow grave two weeks after being kidnapped.

The 80-year-old cardinal, who broke down and wept, told throngs of mourners at the funeral of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho in the northern Iraqi Christian village of Kremlis they are obliged to follow a path of peace.

"The people of the church should be self-restrained and patient," he said in Mar Aada church in Kremlis, about 35 kilometres (22 miles) east of the main northern city of Mosul, where Rahho's body was found on Thursday.

Rahho, 65, was kidnapped during a shootout in which three of his companions were killed, as he returned home after mass in Mosul on February 29.

His kidnappers telephoned church authorities on Thursday to announce that the archbishop had died and that they had buried him, giving the location of the grave.

The cleric's body was later exhumed from the site.

"He worked day and night in the church," Cardinal Delly told the mourners on Friday, many of them spilling into the street outside the overcrowded church. AFP