Baghdad, Iraq ? Christians crowded into churches across Iraq on Sunday to celebrate Easter, the feast of new beginnings, nervous over what the new Iraq has in store for their resilient but dwindling minority in an overwhelmingly Muslim land.

A longtime bishop of Baghdad used the occasion to ask that President Bush help introduce an Iraqi constitution that treats Christians the same as Muslims.

At Baghdad’s Sacred Heart Church, meanwhile, the Chaldean Catholic pastor told a congregation overflowing out the doors that re-establishing law and order was everyone’s first concern.

“Jesus rose from the dead saying, ‘I give you peace,”‘ the Rev. Basic Shamoun said. “We’re in a time when we need peace.”

But in the courtyard outside, parishioners spoke frankly of a deeper worry, that the U.S. promise of democracy to replace Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship might lead to rule by Iraq’s poor, downtrodden Shiite Muslims, a majority whose fundamentalists are prone to religious intolerance. Saddam’s regime was dominated by Sunni Muslims.

“If they come to power, we’ll leave the country,” electrician Jacob Koda, 51, said of the Shiites.

“They’re brainwashed with religious ideas. To them, Christians are bad people,” said pharmacist Noel Kadu, 51.

Attacks on Christians

Christians, most of them Chaldean Catholics, total 700,000 in Iraq, about 5 percent of the population. Although they have generally coexisted peacefully with their Muslim neighbors over the centuries, they also have been persecuted at times, and many have emigrated to the United States and Europe.

As recently as the 1960s, before Saddam’s Baath Party came to power, many prominent Christians were imprisoned. Under the Baath, Christian schools were nationalized, official discrimination was perpetuated in marriage rules, requiring Christians to convert to Islam in order to marry Muslims, and unofficial discrimination persisted in hiring, job promotion and other areas.

Iraqi Christians stand during the celebration of Easter Mass at Baghdad's Sacred Heart Catholic church. Some of Iraq's minority Christians say they may face uncertain times if Islamic fundamentalist gain political power in the wake of the fall of Saddam Hussein.

In northern Iraq, Muslim mobs are reported to have attacked Assyrian Catholics several times in recent years, according to human rights reports from the U.S. State Department.

On Sunday in the southern city of Basra, sunlight filtered through the stained glass panels of St. Therese Catholic Church as Archbishop Gabriel Kassab led parishioners in a prayer to remember war victims. “We must not forget those who have died,” he said, waving a gold cross in one hand.

About 500 people crowded into well-worn wooden pews, voices raised in prayer and song during a three-hour service. Though Basra is a Shiite Muslim stronghold, it also has a sizable Christian community.

“There’s nothing nicer than peace,” said Boushra Thomas, 46, as she waved a lace fan to cut through the morning’s heat. “We could not come to church during the war because there was so much shelling and bombing. Danger was everywhere. Now we can come anytime we like.”

“As Iraqis we have to be united more than ever during this Easter,” said the Rev. Emmanuel Delly, freshly retired after 40 years as Baghdad’s Chaldean bishop.

But Delly, in an interview, said a top priority now must be to recover confiscated Christian schools and associated property — there are some 30 schools in Baghdad alone — and establish equal rights for Christians in a new constitution.

“We can’t meet Mr. Bush. But please tell Mr. Bush, ‘I am asking you in the name of all bishops to give us a good constitution,”‘ Delly said.

An Iraqi constituent assembly, chosen through a still-unannounced process, is expected to adopt a new constitution by next year.

More sorrow than joy

Arriving for mass at Sacred Heart Church, black-clad Nahida Issa, 54, talked nervously of recent protests by young Shiites in Baghdad’s streets demanding that U.S. troops pull out.

“They’ve done a lot of the looting, you know,” Issa said. “They might grow frenzied.”

Another woman, with her husband and four children, said that she had heard about the new Shiite activism, now that the repressive, Sunni Muslim-dominated regime has fallen.

“I’m worried,” said Ahlam Abed, 47. “The fundamentalists are forming political parties.”

At a nearby convent, Sister Philip Kirma, general superior of a tiny international order of Chaldean nuns, the Daughters of Mary Immaculate, threw up her hands when asked about the Christians’ future: “We don’t know what our destiny will be.”

The 53-year-old nun learned just two days earlier that a beloved Muslim guard at another of her convents, a young father, was killed when someone picked up a U.S. “bomblet” — a canister-size piece of a cluster bomb.

As with many others, for her it wasn’t a joyful Easter.

“In Mass today, I cried the whole time,” she said.

“All the miseries of the Iraqi people came to me … all the thousands and thousands lost, fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters.”