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MANCHESTER, England - A group of 11 sick, disabled and elderly Iraqi Christians — including an 80-year-old woman with breast cancer — defied terrorists who ordered them to convert to Islam or be beheaded, saying they preferred death to giving up their faith.

ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT FROM SEOUL, South Korea - Pope Francis said the use of force can be justified to stop "unjust aggressors" such as Islamic State militants in northeastern Iraq, but he declined to endorse U.S. military airstrikes against the militants and said such humanitarian interventions should not be decided on by any single country.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis' personal envoy to the suffering people of Iraq joined the Chaldean Catholic patriarch in launching an appeal to the international community Aug. 18, pleading for help to liberate villages controlled by the Islamic State terrorists and to provide the displaced with international protection.

WASHINGTON - Western leaders pressed their governments to increase humanitarian efforts on behalf of persecuted Christians and other minorities in northern Iraq.

VATICAN CITY - The one thing Iraqi Church leaders and aid workers, foreign charities and governments cannot do for the displaced and terrorized people of northeastern Iraq is answer their question, "What will become of us?" said Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the Pope's envoy to the region.

A coalition of more than 50 U.S. religious leaders, led by mostly conservative Catholic, evangelical and Jewish activists, is calling on President Barack Obama to sharply escalate military action against Islamic extremists in Iraq. They say “nothing short of the destruction” of the Islamic State can protect Christians and religious minorities now being subjected to “a campaign of genocide.”

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis formally asked U.N. agencies and the entire international community "to take action to end the humanitarian tragedy now underway" in northeastern Iraq.

OTTAWA - Canadian Catholic charitable agencies have put out urgent appeals for assistance to help Iraqi Christians fleeing for their lives from Islamist extremists from the Islamic State (ISIS}.

BEIRUT - The memory of that brutal June evening in his home near Mosul, Iraq, brought 48-year-old Joseph, now a refugee in Lebanon, to tears.

VATICAN CITY - As he dispatches a top aide to wartorn Iraq this week, Pope Francis made his most impassioned plea yet for the world to halt the “slaughter” of Christians and other religious minorities by Islamic extremists.

The following is statement from Cardinal Thomas Collins.

BEIRUT - Mideast Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs denounced the "total international silence" on the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and called for Muslim religious authorities to issue fatwas, or legal edicts, banning attacks against Christians and "other innocents."

TORONTO - Dressed in shirts that proclaimed “I am Christian, I am Iraqi,” carrying signs pleading for protection of their families still in Iraq, 5,000 Iraqi Christians and their supporters marched on Queen������Ƶapp Park August 10 to draw attention to the plight of their brethren back home.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis asked Catholics around the world to pray for tens of thousands of Christians from villages in northeastern Iraq who were forced from their homes in the middle of the night by Islamic State militants.

DETROIT - Shouting slogans such as “Obama, Obama, where are you? Iraqi Christians need you!” and “Stop the violence in Iraq!” about 150 protest-ers marched through the streets of downtown Detroit Aug. 1 to call awareness to the violent persecution of Christians in their native land.