Mafraq (means “crossroads”) is located on the northern plain at the edge of the vast eastern desert, 20 km. from the Syrian border and surrounded by Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia. Many of its inhabitants settled in the 1920s and worked for the Iraq Petroleum Company, originally an English company that brought oil by pipeline through Jordan to Haifa, in what was then Palestine.

Infrastructures of the Latin Patriarchate 

Al-Hosson’s parish priest served the Mafraq community since 1933. The Patriarchate in 1944 rented a house for liturgical services and other activities. The parish was officially opened upon the arrival of the Rosary Sisters. Construction of the church began in 1949, the convent and school were built in 1950. A one-room school for boys with a male teacher started under the house of the priest. A new building with classrooms for girls was built in 1959 and the following year, the boys’ classrooms were in a separate building. The kindergarten was built in 1962 under the house of the priest and one of the old buildings was demolished and a new structure was built with more and larger classrooms.