For the first time in History, a Pope visits Iraq, the cradle of Christianity

For the first time in history, a Pope will visit from Iraq to comfort the Christian minority decimated by conflict and the harshness of life and reach out, in a spectacular gesture, to Shiite Islam.

In the cradle of Christianity, which wars have left bloodless and which is still marked by the violence of the Islamic State (IS) group, the Pope Francisco will meet with the highest religious authority in a part of the Shiite world, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in Najaf, south of Baghdad.

It is also the first trip of the sovereign pontiff since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, after having been vaccinated, as well as the multitude of journalists and ecclesiastics who accompany him.

During his three-day stay, the 84-year-old Argentine pope will visit a diverse but minimized Christian minority amid a population of 40 million Iraqis exhausted after 40 years of wars and economic crises.

The papal program is as ambitious as the trip is historic: until Monday, the pontiff will visit a cathedral that was the scene of a 2010 hostage-taking in Baghdad, the city of Ur, in the southern desert of Iraq, Najaf and the destroyed churches by ISIS in Mosul (north).

Three days, 1,650 km

The Pope will travel about 1,650 kilometers mainly by plane.

Throughout its journey, welcome messages and calls for coexistence have been posted. Roads have been paved, security checkpoints have been installed and renovation work has been undertaken in places that until now have never been on official visiting programs.

“The message of the Pope is to say that the Church is on the side of those who suffer” the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul and Aqra, Najeeb Michaeel, told AFP.

“The Pope will send a strong message even here where crimes against humanity and genocide have been perpetrated”, says the prelate, who had to flee from the jihadists in Mosul.

The Christian community of Iraq is one of the oldest and one of the most diverse, in which the Chaldeans-Catholics, the Orthodox and Protestant Armenians stand out.

At the time of the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein (1979-2003) there were about 1.5 million Christians, around 6% of Iraqis. But today there are at most 400,000 left, 1% of the population, estimates William Warda of Hammurabi, a local minority NGO.

Before the exile, most of the Christians were in the province of Nineveh, the capital of which is Mosul. Here, shop windows and prayer books are in modern Aramaic.

Cradle of Abraham

When IS jihadists occupied Mosul in 2014, the Pope Francisco supported the international military campaign to reinforce Iraqi forces. Then he said he wanted to go support the Christians of Iraq.

In 2019, the sovereign pontiff condemned the bloody repression of a popular revolt against the power that especially shook Baghdad and southern Iraq.

It is to this southern region that the pope will go on Saturday, to Ur, where the patriarch Abraham was born, according to tradition.

But Iraq was already on the mind of the Vatican even before the arrival of the Pope Francisco. In 2000, Saddam Hussein poured cold water at the last minute on the hopes of John Paul II, who was counting on making a pilgrimage to the country.

Nineteen years later, the patriarch of the Chaldean Church in Iraq, Louis Sako, obtained from Iraqi President Barham Saleh an official invitation addressed to the pope to come and “cure” the country of violence, often confessional.

Covid-19 delayed the trip but neither the confinement, imposed for the entire duration of his visit, nor the announcement that the Vatican ambassador in Baghdad tested positive for coronavirus have changed the program. The only incidence is that the pope will be deprived of crowd baths.

Secluded in a Vatican monastery since his resignation eight years ago, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI judged this trip as “very important” but also “dangerous”, both for security reasons and as a result of the covid.

“Huge impact”

Several Vatican security teams have visited Iraq, the scene of lively geopolitical tensions, to organize security. Provincial commissions are in charge of shielding the Pope’s circuit.

On Friday morning, the papal plane will land in Baghdad with about 150 people on board, half journalists.

The Pope Francisco will again reach out to Islam. In 2019 in the United Arab Emirates, he signed with Sheikh Ahmed al Tayeb, imam of Al Azhar, the highest institution of Sunni Islam, a document encouraging dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

In Iraq, Pope Francis will go to meet the Shiites, the majority in Iraq but the minority in the world – 200 million of the 1,800 million Muslims – when he meets the great Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

For the governor of Najaf, Louai al-Yasseri, this is a “historic visit” while Sistani, although physically invisible, has become in the last three decades a compass for the Shiites of Iraq and the rest of the world.

“There is talk of a religious leader followed by 20% of the world’s population: his visit means a lot, his meeting with the Grand Ayatollah will have a huge impact.”