Westminster's Cardinal Vincent Nichols and a bishop from Iraq came together in central London to bless a crucifix found in the rubble left behind by Daesh (ISIS) in the ancient Nineveh Plains.
At the meeting, in Archbishop's House, Westminster, Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil described how the crucifix had been discovered intact by Stephen Rasche, his chief counsel and projects' coordinator
Mr Rasche spotted it half-buried outside St George's Church, in Baqofah village, near the Iraqi town of Alqosh.
The archbishop visited the UK at the invitation of Aid to the Church in Need, the Catholic charity which facilitated the loan of the crucifix to a March 2017 exhibition of crosses displayed in Westminster Cathedral by curator Lucien de Guise.
The blessing ceremony came as part of a week-long series of events for the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop, which included a private meeting with HRH The Prince of Wales in central London.
The archbishop was in the UK to raise awareness of the Return to the Roots programme, a scheme part-sponsored by ACN, enabling thousands of Christian families to return home to Nineveh, following the expulsion of Daesh from the region in November.
Archbishop Warda is a member of the Nineveh Reconstruction Committee overseeing the Return to the Roots scheme as well as a key project partner for Aid to the Church in Need's emergency work for the 100,000 displaced people in his Erbil archdiocese and elsewhere in Kurdish northern Iraq.