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BAGHDAD – Pope Francis left Baghdad Monday morning after a historic visit, the first by a chief rabbi, to Iraq, which ended without incident in a country that often witnesses security tensions and acts of violence. .
Since Friday, the 84-year-old Pope Francis has traveled between Baghdad and Erbil, Mosul and Qaraqosh in northern Iraq, which has suffered for years from jihadists, to cross a total of 1,445 km by plane, helicopter or vehicle. armored, accompanied by a large security escort.
This visit represented a diplomatic and security challenge for Baghdad, during which the Pope delivered messages of support to the Christians of Iraq, one of the oldest Christian groups in the world.
In addition to the security challenges, the visit also came amid a health challenge, with the number of COVID-19 cases rising.
On Friday, the Pope began his journey by highlighting that he would come “as a penitent, asking forgiveness from heaven and brotherhood for the great destruction and cruelty of humanity”, and “a pilgrim who brings peace.”
At the end of the visit activities at a mass in Erbil on Sunday, the Pope said goodbye to the Iraqis and said: “Iraq will always be with me and in my heart.”
On Sunday, the pope visited Mosul, where he prayed for the souls of “war victims” in Hosh Al-Baya Square, in front of an old ruined church.
He lamented in a speech there over the “tragic decline in the number of disciples of Christ” in the Middle East. He prayed from the archaeological site, witnessing the rapes of the jihadists, “for the good of the victims of war and armed conflict,” and stressed that “hope is stronger than death and peace is stronger than war. “.
And it forced many Christians in Iraq, due to wars, conflicts and poor living conditions, to emigrate. Only 400,000 Christians remain in Iraq today, out of a population of 40 million, after reaching 1.5 million in 2003 before the US invasion of Iraq.
He visited Qaraqosh, the Christian city whose inhabitants were all displaced during Islamic State control, and some of them have returned in recent years, and presided over the Great Church of the Holy Mass. “The road to full recovery may still be long, but I ask you, please, not to despair,” the pope said in a speech there.
On the second day of his visit, the Pope met on Saturday in Najaf with the supreme Shiite cleric, Ali al-Sistani, who declared his interest in the “security and peace” of Iraqi Christians.
In Ur, a spiritually symbolic site, the Pope denounced in a speech “terrorism that offends religion.”
