The Vatican has confirmed the kidnapping by armed gunmen of 66 year-old Catholic Archbishop Basile Georges Casmoussa on Monday in the northern Mosul region of Iraq.

In a statement released Monday, the vatican is condemming the abduction as a terrorist act and is urging those responsible to release the prelate immediately.Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Valls says the Holy See "condemns in the firmest manner this terrorist act and demands that Monsignor Casmoussa is rapidly returned safe and well to his ministry".

The Archbishop was said to have been kidnapped while on a pastoral visit within his archdiocese of 30,000 people according to a colleague, Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel-Karim Delly of Baghdad. "He was kidnapped after he came out of a house where he was making a pastoral visit, in his Archdiocese of Mosul. He was seized and put into a car. We don't know who kidnapped him or the reason for this abduction," stated Patriarch Delly.

This is the latest in a string of recent kidnappings of Christians and Muslims in the last few weeks along with an increase in violence against Christians in the Mosul region of Iraq.

It is being reported that as many as 70,000 Christian Iraqis have fled their country in recent months for the relative safety of neighbouring Syria.