Pope Francis undertakes historic visit to Iraq amid strict security measures

Pope Francis kicks off historic visit to Iraq this Friday amid high security measures and pandemic, in a martyred country where he hopes to comfort one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, destroyed by conflict and persecution.

Pope Francis left Rome this Friday morning, on his first trip abroad since the COVID-19 pandemic, confirmed the AFP aboard your plane.

The 84-year-old sovereign pontiff, who has assured that he will make this first visit by a pope to Iraq as a “pilgrim of peace”, will also reach out to Shia Muslims in a meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highest religious authority for adherents of this branch of Islam.

During this four-day visit to several cities, the Pope will be alone on the roads developed for the occasion due to total containment decreed in the country where the number of cases this week has broken a record since the start of the covid pandemic. 19, with more than 5,000 infected per day.

The leader of the 1,300 million Catholics of the world, who feel “caged” in recent months in a Vatican slowed down by covid-19, will embark in an armored vehicle on a “virtual” trip without people that they will continue on television, and mainly on the air. The helicopter or the papal plane will sometimes fly over areas where jihadists of the Islamic State (IS) group are still hiding.

The stages in the four corners of the country will bring together only a few hundred people, with the exception of the Sunday mass at the Erbil stadium, in Kurdistan, which will be attended by several thousand faithful who have reserved their places in advance.

The papal program is ambitious. Baghdad, Najaf, Ur, Erbil, Mosul, Qaraqosh: from Friday to Monday, it will travel 1,445 km in a country hit by rocket fire on Wednesday, the latest episode of Iranian-American tensions still latent in Iraq.

This first trip abroad in fifteen months will allow the Pope to meet a small community of the faithful in the “peripheries” of the planet, which he likes the most.

For Saad al Rassam, a Christian from Mosul, who is still rebuilding after the war against Daesh, this trip comes at the best time in this country whose poverty rate affected 40% of the population in 2020. “We hope the Pope explains to the government that he must help his people“He told AFP.

As he always does, François will begin on Friday with a speech to the Iraqi leaders. Beyond the security or economic difficulties suffered by the 40 million Iraqis, they will undoubtedly speak of the additional trauma of Christians.

When in 2014, the IS conquered the plain of Nineveh, a Christian stronghold of the north, tens of thousands of inhabitants have fled and few now trust the police who then abandoned them, they say.

“Some had a few minutes to decide whether to leave or be beheaded,” recalls priest Karam Qacha.

“They had to give up everything, except their faith”, sums up this Chaldean priest from Nineveh, who denounces the little help that the government gives to Christians to recover their houses or their lands, often monopolized by militiamen – sometimes Christians – or relatives. politicians.

Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, who heads the Congregation of Oriental Churches in the Vatican and accompanies the Pope, regrets that “a Middle East without Christians is a “Middle East which has flour but lacks yeast and salt“.

This is why, he assures us, that Pope Francis will not hesitate to ask them to stay or return to Iraq where there are 400,000 left, against 1.5 million twenty years ago.

A call to return “compulsory” but “difficult”says Cardinal Sandri, because for 40 years Iraq has been living in war or in political or economic crisis.

According to the “Help the Church in Peril” foundation, only 36,000 of the 102,000 Christians who left Nineveh have returned. And of them, a third say they plan to leave the country by 2024 for fear of militias and because of unemployment, corruption and discrimination.

On Saturday, and for the first time in history, the Pope will be received in the holy city of Najaf (south) by the great Ayatollah Ali Sistani in person, a frail 90-year-old man who has never appeared in public.

The Pope will also participate in a prayer in Ur, birthplace of Abraham in the tribal and rural south, with Shiite, Sunni, Yazidi and Sabaean dignitaries.

With information from AFP

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