“I come as a pilgrim of peace,” Pope Francis declared about his visit to Iraq Mar. 5. His visit, extending for four days, marks his first since the pandemic halted international travel. No other sitting pontiff has ever visited the country now struggling with a political and economic crisis as the coronavirus ravages through uncontrollably.
In the palace of former autocrat Saddam Hussein, the Pope called for cooperation and unity among ethnic groups and, in a church where a gunman had killed 58 people 10 years earlier, he called for an end to religious violence.
His message was clearly one of peace and rebuilding. “This trip is emblematic,” he said on the plane, “It’s a duty to a land martyred for many years.” Indeed, the martyred land, after decades of sanctions and dictatorship, fell into a civil war that resulted in the rise of terrorist organizations.
This is why the Pope’s visit to Iraq is particularly important. The number of Christians in Iraq has been dwindling for decades now, catalyzed by religious attacks on the community. The number of Christians has shrunk sevenfold over the past three decades as hundreds of thousands flee to seek refuge in Western countries.
“Four people from ISIS came in here, one from that side, another this way,” Qais Michael Bernard, who acted as an usher at the church on Friday, said. “It’s [the visit] is good. Makes people want to stay here.”
The Pope’s visit faces its own dangers, too. Friday, the day the Pope was scheduled to land in Iraq, the State Department issued a warning to U.S. citizens in Iraq to be alert to the possibility of attacks during Pope Francis’s visit.
“Attacks may occur with little to no warning, impacting airports, tourist locations, transportation hubs, markets/ shopping malls and local government facilities,” the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad warned.
However, Pope Francis probably saw the irony in this warning. The Vatican strongly opposed the American invasion of Iraq. The period marking the start of the invasion in 2003 and 2010 saw more than half the population of Iraqi Christians flee the country.
“I come as a penitent,” he said Friday, “Asking forgiveness of heaven and my brothers and sisters for so much destruction and cruelty.”
A day after Pope Francis arrived, he met with Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country’s highest ranking Shiite cleric. Citizens hope that this meeting will be a turning point in the relationship between Muslims and minority Christians in the country.
A statement released by Ayatollah Sistani’s office emphasized the cleric’s statement that Christian citizens deserve to “live like all Iraqis in security and peace with full constitutional rights.”
Today, in a country where the earliest followers of Christianity had once lived, priests fear Christianity being completely wiped out in the country. With Christians being less than one percent of the population, Rev. Karam Qasha says, “Of course this is our fear.” He went on to add that seeing the Pope praying with Christians in Iraq will show the Muslim majority “we are here.”
Speaking at the presidential palace, the Pope exclaimed, “How much we have prayed in these years for peace in Iraq!” And yet, we have to push for much more. Pope Francis’s visit might give Iraqi Christians fleeting hope, but what will give them real hope that one day the Iraq they once knew will return is actual progress in the fight against corruption, terrorism and Iranian interference.
