During his visit to the town of Shatin in Batroun, Rai relayed the suffering of Christians in Iraq as well as the threat of the Islamic State, stressing that he will inform Pope Francis about all these issues during his upcoming visit to the Vatican on Thursday.
Last Wednesday (August 20), Patriarch Rai along with a delegation of patriarchs headed to Iraq's Erbil in a show of solidarity with Christians who had fled their villages in the wake of the Islamic State offensive.
Rai called from Erbil on the United Nations to respect the resolutions it issues and work on protecting the region, calling on Christians of Iraq not to immigrate and to preserve their place of origin.
The ancient Christian community of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul had all fled, ending a presence stretching back nearly two millennia after radical Islamists set them a deadline to submit to Islamic rule or leave.
The ultimatum by the Islamic State drove out the few hundred Christians who had remained when the group's hardline Sunni Muslim fighters overran Mosul, threatening Christians and the diverse city's other religious communities.
The Islamic State gave any remaining Christians a final choice: convert to Islam, pay a religious tax, or face the sword.
A Catholic bishop from Mosul said that 150 Christian families had left and church leaders had advised the few families who wanted to negotiate with militants that they should also flee for their own safety.
The Christians described their flight as a historic loss.
The Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot, relayed its ultimatum from mosque loudspeakers and spray-painted Christian properties with the letter "N" for Nasrani, or Christian.
Religious leaders have expressed alarm at the order. "It is forbidden for Christians to be rejected, expelled or wiped out," said Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako in a statement published on his official website.