{"id":113945,"date":"2026-05-14T17:27:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T17:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/113945\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T17:27:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T17:27:15","slug":"pope-brought-shame-by-honoring-iran-envoy-convert-sentenced-to-death-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/113945\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope brought shame by honoring Iran envoy, convert sentenced to death says"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cPope Leo XIV has brought shame upon the Christian world,\u201d an Iranian-American Christian writer whose life was saved by Pope Benedict XVI after the Islamic regime sentenced her to death for converting, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Marziyeh Amirizadeh was sentenced to execution by hanging in Iran in 2009 for converting to Christianity and for apostasy. Pope Benedict’s intervention, she said, is what led to her release after nearly 250 days in Tehran\u2019s<\/a> notorious Evin Prison.<\/p>\n

Her comments to the Post came after Pope Leo bestowed a special honor on the Iranian ambassador to the Holy See, along with several other diplomats, for their years-long service.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2009, I was imprisoned and sentenced to death by hanging solely because of my Christian faith by the same regime that Pope Leo<\/a> XIV now praises and awards. At that time, Pope Benedict XVI stood on the side of justice and condemned the persecution of Christians in Iran, sending a message against the actions of the Iranian government,\u201d she continued. \u201cIt is deeply shameful that while the world knows how the ruling ayatollahs have killed and imprisoned countless Iranians for demanding freedom, and continue to execute innocent people, the Vatican chooses to insult millions of Iranians by honoring representatives of that regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the US embassy claimed that the honor did not imply the pope\u2019s support for the regime, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency bragged that officials had praised \u201cthe Iranian embassy\u2019s activities in advancing peaceful coexistence, wisdom, tolerance, and interfaith dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PhotoPhoto of Marziyeh Amirizadeh taken while she was in prison by her sister. (credit: Courtesy)<\/p>\n

\u201cBy honoring representatives of the Islamic Republic, he has chosen to stand alongside a regime responsible for the suffering, imprisonment, and killing of countless innocent Iranians,\u201d Amirizadeh said. \u201cHe turns a blind eye to the brutal repression, executions, and persecution carried out by the Iranian authorities while presenting their representatives as promoters of \u2018peace\u2019 and \u2018dialogue.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Born only a year before the Islamic revolution, Amirizadeh has no memories of a free Iran. Instead, she recalled a childhood colored by forced Islamization.<\/p>\n

While her family was not practicing Islam at home, \u201cthe system of brainwashing\u201d meant she couldn\u2019t avoid being subjected to its brutal rhetoric from the moment she started school at age 7.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember every morning they force children to stand in lines to say, \u2018Death to America, Death to Israel,\u2019 before going to classes,\u201d she recounted, adding how they would inspect girls for nail polish or a single strand of hair peeking out of their hijabs.<\/p>\n

In Quran<\/a> class, she would listen to the teacher \u201cdescribe how to treat infidels,\u201d how non-Muslims would all burn in hell, and how only the return of Imam Muhammad al-Mahdi would spare the millions of non-Muslims from the fire if they failed to convert during their lifetimes. During prayers, girls were taken to a separate room and forced to display their sanitary napkins to teachers to prove they were menstruating, which prevented them from joining the rituals.<\/p>\n

She was told that God would create a noose of hair to hang her by if she allowed men to see her hair, and molten lead would be poured down her throat in Jannam if she was not a good Muslim woman.<\/p>\n

The same lessons she learned in school, that America was an imperialist force that needed to be destroyed and Jews were evil occupiers of Islamic Palestinian lands, would follow her home as she watched state TV parrot the same narratives.<\/p>\n

In the streets, Amirizadeh would \u201cwalk with fear\u201d as the Basij morality police would stop women to check their hair was fully covered, their clothes were not too colorful, their shoes were the right type, and their nails were clear.<\/p>\n

Despite the fear, shame, and violent rhetoric, Amirizadeh was \u201cthirsty\u201d for a relationship with God. This led her to completely dedicate herself to Islamic life for two years, pray Namaz multiple times a day, and read the Quran.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a teenager at that time, and I was searching to see if he’s going to respond to me, if he’s going to show Himself to me. But nothing happened, because it was just practicing nonsense Arabic words, but the only good thing that came out of that it opened my eyes to a lot of verses in the Quran,\u201d she said, pointing to a verse in Surah An-Nisa, which legitimizes beating a wife.<\/p>\n

Her disillusionment with Islam came after years of waiting to see a vision of God that never appeared. It was only when she turned 18 that she had a dream of a white horse descending from the sky and Muslims practicing the sacrifice of Ashura turning into \u201cbeast-like savages\u201d that she said she understood God was showing her the \u201ctrue face\u201d of Islam.<\/p>\n

\u201cGod revealed to me what Islam is and then his amazing love, which was shocking to me, because I was speechless, I could not describe the love that I experienced,\u201d she described. \u201cIt was more beyond the earthly love that we experienced, and I was just crying, and I remember for weeks I was just insane. I wanted to die. I wanted to go to him, to God, and experience that love again and again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amirizadeh didn\u2019t initially realize she wanted to be a Christian, but was introduced to the faith a few years later by a friend. After receiving a bible from this friend, something that alone could lead to an execution in Iran, she began having vivid dreams of Jesus Christ and dedicated herself entirely.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter having such an encounter, I started telling everyone about Jesus. I started evangelizing all my friends, my family members, and everyone I would see. I would tell them that Jesus is the truth and share my experience with them because I was so desperate. I wanted my people, everyone, to know that Jesus is the truth,\u201d she recounted.<\/p>\n

Amirizadeh reported for apostasy, arrested by IRGC<\/p>\n

One of the underground churches connected her with a church in the UK, which selected her to study theology in a special program in Turkey.<\/p>\n

Reinvigorated and sure of her life\u2019s mission after returning from the program, she started secretly distributing 20,000 Bibles across the country at night. She explained that she began by speaking to the women subjected to temporary marriages, whom she said were unaware they were being made religiously-sanctioned sex workers.<\/p>\n

After more than four years of preaching, someone reported Amirizadeh and a friend for apostasy. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps<\/a> (IRGC) demanded she appear at a local station one day, claiming that there was a problem with her car\u2019s paperwork. While she said she was aware there was something wrong, she had little choice but to comply.<\/p>\n

At the station, the first question the IRGC asked her was, \u201cAre you a Christian?\u201d She responded, \u201cOf course.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without much warning, the officer \u201cimmediately got mad,\u201d handcuffed her, and went to her apartment without any warrant, where they arrested her friend after finding a few Bibles.<\/p>\n

For 14 days, the pair were held in an \u201cunderground dungeon\u201d with cells too narrow for two people to stand, she recounted. Forced to sleep on concrete floors with urine-soaked blankets, Amirizadeh said she finally started to see the true extent of the regime\u2019s brutality.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way that they would feed us was putting food in a very dirty big pot, and they would just kick it with their legs, not even with their hands inside that corridor. When they would open the cell doors, prisoners would attack that pot and eat with their hands, which was horrible to see, without giving us even plates or spoons. And that’s why my friend and I refused to eat for days,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

Most prisoners only spent four days in those conditions, Amirzadeh explained, but they were held for triple the standard time after she refused orders from a judge to reject Christ. For this, he said she needed to be executed immediately.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey treated us like animals because in Islam, they believe if you convert from Islam to any other religion, you are an infidel and dirty,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n

Even facing death, she began speaking to the other prisoners held in the underground cells about Christianity. \u201cWe would pray for them, and a lot of them gave their hearts to Jesus at that time in prison, and then after 14 days, they sent us to Evin Prison,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

In the political prisoners\u2019 wing of the notorious Evin Prison, Amirizadeh witnessed even more severe brutality. With the world focused on her case, the regime focused on psychologically torturing her to ensure she had no visible scars that could be proven.<\/p>\n

Women without families to advocate for them were forced into sexual slavery when they thought they were getting jobs, and others were forced to stumble blindfolded around rooms filled with the dead bodies of murdered prisoners, Amirizadeh described. The women were served food tainted that would make them sick, sometimes finding trash or even teeth in the dishes served to them.<\/p>\n

For the first few months, Amirizadeh was subjected to daily eight-hour interrogations and denied access to her lawyer. She said the regime did this to almost all the prisoners to extract confessions before they had the opportunity to defend themselves. Strapped and blindfolded to a metal chair during these questionings, Amirizadeh said she would hear the sounds of prison guards beating women against the cell walls.<\/p>\n

Amirizadeh said she was only spared such treatment because her sister was quick to contact international churches. Still, the regime found ways to hurt her.<\/p>\n

She befriended Shirin Alam Hooli, a woman detained for alleged membership in a banned Kurdish group, and the regime reduced her to a whipping boy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey beat her up, they kicked her stomach, they flogged her under the foot [so] that the skin came off\u2026 That was my horrible experience hearing what happened to my best friend in prison,\u201d she described.<\/p>\n

The regime murdered Shirin on May 9, 2010, and refused to return her body to her family for burial.<\/p>\n

Amirizadeh claimed the regime refused to return the remains as a way to hide the rape of virgin women before their executions and added that she suspects their organs are being trafficked by the regime.<\/p>\n

Told upon her release that Pope Benedict\u2019s intervention had saved her, Amirizadeh was quick to flee to Turkey and then the United States, where she has now built her new life. She has published two books on her ordeal and finding God, Captive in Iran and A Love Journey with God, but has been unable to emotionally distance herself from the trauma of the Iranian people, even from thousands of miles away.<\/p>\n

Amirizadeh had just come out of surgery when the news of the regime\u2019s brutal suppression of the January protests reached her. She has been struggling with the fact that she couldn\u2019t speak up on their behalf at the time, more so as she learns of the deaths of more and more of her friends. The internet shutdown has also meant she’s been unable to contact and verify the well-being of many.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had so much pain physically, and I was sometimes just crying and crying reading those news, it would bring all those stories that I myself experienced,\u201d she said, displaying the single ticks next to messages she tried to send friends months ago. \u201c…My people are asking America and Israel to help them and to hit this regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

While she couldn\u2019t speak at the time, Amirizadeh has spent countless hours exposing Tehran and its proxies since the October 7 massacre in southern Israel and continues to do so today as the founder and president of NewPersia.org, whose mission is to be the voice of persecuted Christians and oppressed women, expose the lies of the Islamic regime, and restore the relationships between Persians, Jews, and Christians.<\/p>\n

As a public speaker, she has worked to root out antisemitism from the Christian community and share what she saw in her multiple visits to Israel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPope Leo XIV has brought shame upon the Christian world,\u201d an Iranian-American Christian writer whose life was saved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113946,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7036,34,424,46,39407,5657,17748,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-113945","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-christians","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-irgc","11":"tag-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps","12":"tag-pope-benedict-xvi","13":"tag-pope-leo-xiv","14":"tag-quran","15":"tag-tehran"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116574109216415160","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}