Erbil, with prayers and praise, young Iraqis prepare for World Youth Day in Poland (PHOTOS)

Iraqi Kurdistan hold diocesan meeting between participants and Archbishop Bashar Warda. There will be over 200 young Iraqis at World Youth Day, from various parts of the country. They will recite the "Our Father" in Aramaic for Pope Francis.

Erbil (AsiaNews) - The young Christians of Eril, in Iraqi Kurdistan, are preparing for the World Youth Day (WYD) 2016 to be held in Krakow, Poland, 26 to 31 July. Yesterday, they held the  last meeting at the diocesan level, under the local leadership of the Archbishop, Msgr. Bashar Matti Warda and Fr. Rayan Atto, who is organizing the event together with the bishop.

There will be over 200 young Iraqis - boys and girls - attending the event, from all the dioceses of the country. These will include a group of refugees who fled from Mosul and the Nineveh Plain in the summer of 2014 with the rise of the militias of the Islamic State (IS) in the region.

The delegation will be led by Msgr. Warda, Msgr. Basil Yaldo (deputy to the Chaldean Patriarch Raphael Louis Sako), a dozen priests and a group of nuns.

In recent weeks the participants in WYD promoted a number of meetings at  a community level; on July 19 is scheduled a day of retreat and prayer, inspired by the Jubilee of Mercy.

In Poland the young Iraqis will be involved in some events that they have spent the past months preparing for. The climax will be the recitation of the "Our Father" in Aramaic before Pope Francis.

• Iraq
• Poland
• WYD 2016
• youth