Vatican City, Dec 20, 2018 / 09:58 am
Pope Francis met Thursday with the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, a survivor of ISIS enslavement and an advocate for human rights and persecuted Iraqi minorities.
Murad, who first met Pope Francis at a weekly general audience last year, returned to the Vatican for a private audience with the pope after receiving the Nobel prize in October for her "efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict."
Militants of the Islamic State captured Murad four years ago after killing 6 of her brothers, her mother, and more than 600 Yazidis in her Iraqi village. She was enslaved, along with most of the young women in her community, and repeatedly raped by the ISIS fighters.
After being sold as a slave multiple times and suffering both sexual and physical abuse, Murad escaped ISIS at the age of 23 after 3 months of captivity. Now based in Germany, she has used her freedom to become an advocate for the thousands of Yazidi women who remain missing or in ISIS captivity.