Denomination Roman Catholic Church | Demolished April 2016 | |
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The Our Lady of the Hour Church (Église Notre-Dame de l'Heure ) also known as the name of the Latin Church, was a Catholic church in the center of Mosul, in northern Iraq. Built in the 1870s by the Dominican Fathers, it was especially famous for its bell donated by the Empress Eugenia de Montijo, for which it was sometimes called the Clock Church. Damaged in a 2006 bombing, the church was finally destroyed in April 2016 by ISIL, which had captured the city.
History
In 1860, after the massacre of Damascus, during which were killed between 4,000 and 6,000 Christians, Napoleon III sent an expeditionary force to the Levant to help Eastern Christians. A decade later, the Dominicans created in Mosul the Convent of Our Lady of the Hour. In 1880, the Empress Eugenie donated his watch. That was when the first tower was installed on Iraqi soil. In the courtyard of the church it was built as a replica of the Lourdes grotto with a statue of Our Lady of Miracles, where the faithful come to pray.
In 2006, the church was partially destroyed in a bombing during the Iraq War. In the summer of 2014, Christians in the Nineveh Plain fell into the hands of the Islamic State. Most of the forty-five churches had were destroyed, converted into mosques or prisons. April 24, 2016, what remained of the Latin Church was destroyed by terrorists. Apparently they looted antiquities and works of art before they destroy your tower with explosives. According to Fides, it is not excluded that the church was devastated because of its links with France.