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NAJAF, Iraq: Pope Francis reached out to the world’s Shiite Muslims on Saturday and met with the top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, at a historic moment in modern religious history.
The two elderly and respected men of religion met at Sistani’s humble home in the sanctuary city of Najaf on Saturday (March 6), the second day of the first papal visit to Iraq.
Pope Francis’ meeting in the holy southern city of Najaf, during a whirlwind and perilous journey through Iraq, marked the first time a Pope has met with such an important Shiite cleric.
The 84-year-old pontiff is defying a second wave of coronavirus cases and renewed security fears to make a “long-awaited” trip to Iraq, with the goal of comforting the country’s ancient Christian community, while deepening his dialogue with other religions.
He landed at the Najaf airport, where posters had been posted with a famous saying by Ali, the fourth caliph and relative of the prophet Muhammad, who is buried in the holy city.
“People are of two kinds, either your brothers in faith or your equals in humanity,” read the banners.
Ekhbariya state television showed the Pope’s large convoy moving through Najaf, where children lined a street and waved Iraqi and Vatican flags to the leader of the world’s Catholics.
He went out into one of Najaf’s small alleys and an AFP correspondent saw him cross the threshold of Sistani’s office.
The press was not allowed into the meeting, as the 90-year-old Grand Ayatollah is very lonely and is rarely seen in public.
After his encounter with Sistani, Pope Francis headed to the ruins of ancient Ur in southern Iraq, revered as the birthplace of Abraham, the father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He is scheduled to deliver a speech at an interfaith meeting.
After flying back to Baghdad, he is expected to say mass at the Chaldean Cathedral of St. Joseph.
READ: Pope Francis arrives in Baghdad for a risky and historic tour of Iraq
The visit is one of the highlights of Pope Francis’ four-day trip to a war-scarred Iraq, where Sistani has played a key role in defusing tensions in recent decades.
It took months of careful negotiations between Najaf and the Vatican to secure the face-to-face meeting.
“We are proud of what this visit represents and we thank those who made it possible,” said Mohamed Ali Bahr al-Ulum, a high-ranking cleric in Najaf.
“HIGH MORAL AUTHORITY”
Pope Francis, a staunch supporter of interfaith efforts, has met with top Sunni clerics in several Muslim-majority countries, including Bangladesh, Turkey, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates.
Meanwhile, Sistani is followed by the majority of the world’s 200 million Shiites, a minority among Muslims but the majority in Iraq, and is a national figure for Iraqis.
“Ali Sistani is a religious leader with high moral authority,” said Cardinal Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, director of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and specialist in Islamic studies.
Sistani rarely attends meetings and has refused to speak with Iraq’s current and former prime ministers, according to officials close to him. He agreed to meet with the pope on the condition that Iraqi officials were not present, a source in the president’s office said.
Pope Francis said he was making the trip to show solidarity with Iraq’s devastated Christian community of around 300,000, just a fifth of the number before the 2003 US invasion and the brutal militant Islamist violence that followed.
Pope John Paul II was about to visit him, but had to cancel a planned trip in 2000 after talks with the government of then-leader Saddam Hussein broke down.
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Sistani began his religious studies at the age of five, rising through the ranks of the Shiite clergy to Grand Ayatollah in the 1990s.
While Saddam Hussein was in power, he languished under house arrest for years, but emerged after the US-led invasion that toppled the repressive regime to play an unprecedented public role.
In 2019, he supported Iraqi protesters demanding better public services and preventing outside interference in Iraqi internal affairs.
On Friday in Baghdad, Pope Francis made a similar request.
“That partisan interests cease, those external interests that do not take into account the local population,” said Pope Francis.
Sistani has had a complicated relationship with his birthplace, Iran, where the other main headquarters of the Shiite religious authority is located: Qom.
While Najaf affirms the separation of religion and politics, Qom believes that the top cleric, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, should also rule.
“GREAT PRESTIGE”
Iraqi clerics and Christian leaders said the visit could strengthen Najaf’s position compared to Qom.
“The Najaf school has great prestige and is more secular than the Qom school, more religious,” Ayuso said.
“Najaf gives more weight to social issues,” he added.
In Abu Dhabi in 2019, the Pope met with Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Imam of the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo and a key authority on Sunni Muslims.
They signed a text encouraging Christian-Muslim dialogue, which Catholic clerics hoped Sistani would also endorse, but clerical sources in Najaf told AFP that is unlikely.
While the Pope was vaccinated and encouraged others to receive the vaccine, Sistani’s office has not announced his vaccination.
Iraq is currently affected by a resurgence of coronavirus cases, recording more than 5,000 infections and more than two dozen deaths daily.
