MIRACULOUS MIRACLES™

Saint — Servant of God Fr. Ragheed Ganni

All Saints
Servant of God Fr. Ragheed Ganni
January 20, 1972 AD, Mosul, Iraq — June 3, 2007 AD, Mosul, Iraq — shot with three deacons after Sunday Mass
Iraqi Chaldean Catholic priest; martyr of the Iraq Catholic community
Church of the Holy Spirit, Mosul, Iraq — site of martyrdom, Iraq
Feast
June 3
Canonized
Cause of beatification opened May 8, 2018
✠ MartyrShot outside his church in Mosul with three subdeacons → The Martyrs
Life

Ragheed Aziz Ganni was born on January 20, 1972 at Mosul in Iraq to a Chaldean Catholic family. Educated at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome and the Angelicum, Ragheed received the Chaldean Catholic priestly ordination in 2001.

Ragheed returned to Iraq in 2003 following the US-led invasion of Iraq — serving as parish priest at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul.

During the post-2003 systematic anti-Christian persecution in Iraq (producing the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians), Ragheed undertook the systematic ministry to the Mosul Chaldean community.

On Sunday, June 3, 2007 — the feast of the Most Holy Trinity — Ragheed was ambushed with three Chaldean deacons (Basman Yousef Daud, Ghasan Isam Bidawed, Wahid Hanna Isho) at the Church of the Holy Spirit as they departed after Sunday evening Mass.

Ragheed's last words to the Muslim gunmen: 'How can I close the house of God? Never!'

The cause of beatification was opened by Chaldean Patriarch Louis Sako on May 8, 2018.

Miracles & Phenomena

  • The Iraqi Catholic-Chaldean martyr

    Servant of God Fr. Ragheed Ganni's June 3, 2007 martyrdom with three Chaldean deacons at Mosul — established the 21st-century Iraqi Chaldean Catholic martyr tradition. The Ganni tradition underpins the continuing witness of the Middle Eastern Christian communities during the post-2003 systematic persecution.

Relics
  • Body
    Relics of Servant of God Ragheed Ganni
    Karamlesh, Nineveh Plain, Iraq — Ganni family village burial

    His body rests at the Karamlesh in the Nineveh Plain — his family's ancestral village.

Iconography
  • Ganni at the Church of the Holy Spirit, Mosul

    The young Iraqi Chaldean priest at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mosul being shot with the three Chaldean deacons on June 3, 2007 — the iconography of 21st-century Iraqi Chaldean Catholic martyr tradition.

Patronages
Catholic Iraqi Chaldean Catholic traditionCatholic Middle Eastern Christian martyr tradition
All SaintsBack to Home