Pope Francis met the father of Aylan Kurdi, the boy who drowned in the sea and became a symbol of the refugees

Pope Francis met Sunday evening in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, the father of Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian boy who drowned in the Aegean Sea, who has become a tragic symbol of the refugee crisis in 2015.

Photographs of the body of the three-year-old boy that appeared on a Turkish beach caused uproar and sensitization of refugees from the war in Syria.

“The Pope spoke at length with Abdula Kurdi”, who now lives in Iraqi Kurdistan, “and could hear the pain of a father who lost his family,” said a Vatican statement, when the pontiff made the reception of refugees one of his major themes of the pontificate.

Aylan Kurdi drowned with his older brother Galip and mother Rehanna when their inflatable boat capsized in the Aegean Sea. The family from Kobane in northern Syria wanted to go to Canada.

Pope Francis concluded his visit to Iraq, the first by a pope in the country’s history, on Sunday with a mass at a stadium in Erbil.

Since Friday, he has been in Baghdad, Mosul or Qaraqosh in the north, an area martyred by jihadists, and he pleaded for one of the ancient Christian communities scattered around the world in front of Ayatollah Ali Sistani, a religious reference for the majority. Shiite Muslims.

In one of his speeches, Pope Francis called for “peace” in the Middle East and “in particular in martyred Syria” where the war that began ten years ago has claimed more than 387,000 lives.

By an interpreter, the Pope listened to Abdula Kurdi’s story and expressed his sympathy for the loss of his family. Abdullah thanked the Pope for his words, the Vatican said.

The Kurdi family decided to emigrate, like many Syrians, in 2015 by sea in a small boat from Turkey to Greece. When the boat sank, Alan Kurdi, one of his brothers and their mother perished. The image of Alan’s body lying on a Turkish beach has come to symbolize the dangerous trip to Europe and has sparked international condemnation. The father now runs a charity in Erbil.

Previously, during his visit to the Christian community of Qaraqosh, in northern Iraq, Pope Francis asked Iraqi Christians to forgive the injustices committed against them by Islamic extremists and to rebuild them, on a trip during which he visited the ruins of churches and met enthusiastic crowds in the historic heart of the local Christian community, decimated during the brutal rule of the Islamic State.

At each of their stops in northern Iraq, what was left of the Christian population turned out to be cheerful, dressed in colorful dresses and jubilant sounds, though intense security kept Francis from mingling with the crowds. as it normally would. However, the participants just seemed happy that they had not been forgotten.

Source: AFP and AP

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