Despite the ever-present risk of kidnappings and bomb-blasts, Easter Mass-goers have packed churches across the country both Sunday and the weekend before.
At least two Iraqi priests, until now studying in Europe, have decided to return to Baghdad in a move bound to boost the confidence of the country's dwindling Christian community.
Discussing the Christians' defiance in an interview with Aid to the Church in Need, Bishop Andreas Abouna of Baghdad said the people's determination gave new cause for hope.
Speaking from Baghdad, the auxiliary to the Patriarch of Babylon (Baghdad) of the Chaldeans, said: "Our people are used to being part of a persecuted Church - it's all we've ever known, almost from the beginning starting barely 400 years after Christ.
"They know it is their life to go through this."
Bishop Abouna was speaking on Monday nearly three weeks after the death of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, of Mosul in northern Iraq.
The archbishop, 65, was kidnapped on the steps of his cathedral in an attack which left his driver and two bodyguards dead.
Archbishop Rahho died about two weeks later, apparently of natural causes, and was buried in a shallow grave in Mosul.
Meantime, reports have come in showing how Christians in the nearby Nineveh plains have held peaceful demonstrations calling for the arrest of Archbishop Rahho's kidnappers.
Acting on an Easter appeal by bishops in Nineveh, Christians have taken to the streets with pictures of Archbishop Rahho and other 'martyrs' walking through villages including Karamles, where the prelate's funeral took place on Friday, 14th March.
