The ‘Vicar of Baghdad’ has faced kidnapping, threats of execution, and Iraqi gunfire. now he’s fighting an even bigger battle.

LATEST NEWS: Canon Andrew White says he fighting his toughest battle yet — for survival against the combined diseases of Covid and Multiple Sclerosis. He was admitted to a hospital in southern England in January 2021, and says he caught Covid while in the wards there. We spoke to him, on March 2 2021, via a video call — he was feeling much better after seven weeks, and was as astonishingly full of life and optimistic as usual.

Andrew White, the Vicar of Baghdad, is almost literally a “Loose Canon”,
the planned title for a long documentary – this is just a very rough
preview of some of its elements.

Despite suffering from incurable Multiple Sclerosis, Canon White is unique
– 200 years ago a man of his bravery and swashbuckling spirit would have
been “a pirate”, suggests the head of the worldwide Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, in a forward to
the Canon’s book “Father, Forgive”.

FAITH UNDER FIRE

A local Hampshire vicar battles to keep his church going amid the bombs of Baghdad. Can he continue amid the increased terrorism and civil violence, or will he return to his village and to a much smaller stage?   In his home village, and to his sons, his home office reflects the very different worlds he inhabits here and there.  He attends the inauguration of the Archbishop, and the launch of his new book. 

In Iraq Canon White, the self-styled Vicar of Baghdad, catered as father
figure and protector to a threatened, dwindling Christian community … Yet his ministry was a huge success story – congregants turned up in bigger numbers each Saturday (that’s the real Sabbath, says the Canon)  and all population groups made use of state-of-the-art dentistry and medical treatment. But how did he respond to the real possibility that it all could come crashing down as violence escalates and funding dries up?


DESCRIPTION OF  VIDEO

https://vimeo.com/65147238

Here we catch glimpses of the turbulent priest – at his home in a small
English village, saying good-bye to his son; with Iraqi children outside
his security-surrounded church in bomb-ridden Baghdad; on the road to
Bethlehem, where he is seeking to foster an unlikely reconciliation between hardline Islamists and religious Jews; and with some evangelical Christians in the Holy City of Jerusalem.

LOOSE CANON.



https://vimeo.com/65147238
password:  cannon21