E139: Iraq Persecution, Evangelization & The Church's Youth w/Tiktok Priest Fr. Simon Esshaki

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Lila Rose

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4.8 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 August 2024

⏱️ 71 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What is it like to be a Christian in Iraq? How do I discern God’s call for my life? Is social media the best vehicle to evangelize? In this episode I sit down with Father Simon Esshaki, known for his viral TikTok content and a priest in the Chaldean Rite. We discuss the history of the Chaldean Rite, how his family left Iraq to escape Christian persecution, his biggest struggles and joys of being a priest, his advice for following God’s call, Fr. Simon strategy for reaching young people with the Gospel locally and through social media, and much more.

Transcript

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0:00.0	What's been the hardest part of your priesthood? It's very hard to see a young person who is involved in the church and to see them be led astray.
0:08.5	We have to do our best to give them the nourishment, the spiritual nourishment that they need.
0:13.0	Is that why you started your Tik-Tak account?
0:15.0	Yeah, I mean it was at the time of the COVID lockdowns and people were really scared.
0:20.3	They weren't coming to church often and so I was actually talking to my little
0:23.9	cousin and she showed me a video on Tik-Tock of Catholic and Christian content on the
0:29.5	app so I said we got to get the message out to people. We have to reach people where they are.
0:34.0	Father Simon Asaki, welcome to the podcast.
0:41.0	Thank you so much Lila.
0:42.0	Thanks for having me.
0:43.0	You are the Tik-Tok priest.
0:45.0	I've been doing that for a little while.
0:48.0	Yes, it's a big part of my ministry and I really enjoy it.
0:52.0	I think you might be the most followed priest on Tik-
0:54.0	Yeah, I'm not sure about that.
0:57.0	I mean at least from the beginning of my Tik-Tok ministry,
1:01.0	at least from the beginning I was I mean I didn't really see a lot of
1:06.1	priests on the app so I think that's also one of the reasons why my account
1:10.0	got pretty popular is because you'll be scrolling and you'll see videos of people
1:14.2	dancing and of other random stuff and then all of a sudden oh there's a guy with a collar and a
1:18.5	beard and a beard too and bald and so then I started to do different things as well like you know eating food and
1:25.8	trying out different things and so it got pretty popular. All right so I want to talk
	...

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