Minute by minute: Pope Francis begins historic visit to Iraq

Pope Francis is already in Baghdad to start with your official visit to Iraq which will last until Monday.

Here, the minute by minute of the historic route of the Sovereign Pontiff. (Times are expressed in GMT)

11:25 am: The meeting with Mustafa Al-Kadhimi is over and the Pope goes to the presidential palace in Baghdad for a welcoming ceremony.

11:15 am: Pope Francis’ official visit to Iraq has started. The first activity on the agenda includes a meeting with Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, with whom he is already meeting.

11.08: The Pope got off the plane with a mask and has already walked on Iraqi soil. He was received by the Prime Minister of the country, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi.

10.54: The Pope’s plane landed in Baghdad.

10.40: A large number of people are waiting at the airport for the imminent arrival of the Pope in Baghdad.

6:30 am: Pope Francis left Rome / Fiumicino airport for Baghdad.

5.30: François met for a few minutes a group of 12 Iraqi refugees present in Rome.

5.00: Fidèle embroidered a stole that Pope Francis will wear during his visit to Iraq.

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.

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.

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.

(With information from AFP)

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