Elizabeth Owens y Covadonga Asturias
(ZENIT News / Mosul, 10.16.2025).- When the bells of Mosul rang out again this week, their chime carried more than music. It carried memory and a fragile hope reborn. For the first time since war and terror silenced them nearly a decade ago, the twin towers of Mar Toma and Al Tahira once again filled the city’s air with sound — a sound that once defined Mosul’s plural soul.
The two churches — Mar Toma, Syriac Orthodox, and Al Tahira, Chaldean Catholic — reopened on October 15 after years of painstaking restoration. Both buildings were nearly erased during the years of the Islamic State’s occupation between 2014 and 2017. What had been sacred ground became military outposts, prisons, and ruins. Yet the same soil that saw desecration now hosts a quiet resurrection.
Their bells, cast by the Cornille Havard foundry of Normandy, the same workshop that restored the famous bells of Notre-Dame de Paris, bear inscriptions that read “The truth will make you free” and “Peace I leave you, my peace I give you.” Those words, chosen long before the project began, now sound almost prophetic.
“These churches are not just stones. They are the memory of faith, history, and community,” said Archbishop Najeeb Michael Moussa, the Chaldean bishop of Mosul, speaking after the reopening ceremony. Mar Toma, built in the 7th century, stands on the site where tradition holds that the Apostle Thomas once stayed on his way eastward. Al Tahira, whose name means “The Immaculate,” recalls a Marian apparition said to have protected the city in 1743 from Persian invaders — a story that once united Mosul’s Christians and Muslims in shared devotion.
When ISIS took the city, the churches became symbols of everything it sought to destroy. Mar Toma’s crosses were defaced; its frescoes smashed. The site became first a police station, then a makeshift court, then a prison. Al Tahira, too, was stripped and bombed. The Christian presence that had once made up 14 percent of Mosul’s population dwindled to a few dozen families.
The resurrection of these two landmarks owes much to international solidarity. The Aliph Foundation, through its “Mosul Mosaic” program, financed the restoration in partnership with Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. The Paris-based organization L’Oeuvre d’Orient, known for its support of Eastern Christian communities, managed the project, with technical guidance from France’s National Institute of Heritage. French architect Eugénie Bouniol, who oversaw the work, described it as “a mission of fidelity — to the history of the buildings, to their people, and to the spirit they embody.”
Before any artistic restoration could begin, teams had to clear mines and explosives left behind by militants. Only then could craftsmen start repairing the carved alabaster doors of Mar Toma, dating back to the 13th century and depicting Christ surrounded by the twelve apostles, or the delicate geometric vaults of Al Tahira — masterpieces of the local Jalili style. Local engineers and artisans were trained on site, ensuring that the expertise remains in Iraqi hands.
The result, say observers, is more than a heritage success story. It’s a human one. “This project was about restoring dignity as much as architecture,” Bouniol said. “It was about giving Mosul back its voice.”
For Bishop Moussa, that voice carries a message of hope. “These churches are a sign that faith can be wounded but not extinguished,” he told attendees. “Their restoration is a seed — one that may help our people return.”
Few Christians remain in Mosul today — around 60 families in a city of nearly two million. But the bishop believes that each bell strike now calls not only the faithful, but the future. As the sound travels across the Tigris, mingling with the calls to prayer from nearby mosques, it reclaims the ancient name of the city: al-Mawsil, “the place of connection.”
In Mosul, after years of silence, connection has found its sound again.
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