Pope Francis prays for war victims in Iraq

With the crumbling stone walls of the Al-Tahera Church behind him, Pope Francis made a plea for Christians in the Middle East to stay in their homelands.

Francis arrives at the ruins of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Mosul on Sunday. Picture: AFP

Pope Francis, on his historic Iraq tour, visited Christian communities on Sunday that endured the brutality of Islamic State until the jihadists’ “caliphate” was defeated three years ago.

The 84-year-old, travelling under tight security, led a prayer “for the victims of the war” in Mosul, an ancient crossroads whose centre was reduced to rubble by fierce fighting to oust ISIS.

“We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion,” Francis said at an interfaith service at the Chaldean Cathedral of St Joseph in Baghdad on Saturday, one of the many stops on the first papal visit to the war-scarred country.

Francis’ trip to Iraq as a “pilgrim of peace” aims to reassure the country’s ancient, but dwindling, Christian community and to expand his dialogue with other religions.

Francis releases a dove at a square near the ruins of the Syriac Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception (al-Tahira-l-Kubra), in the old city of Iraq's northern Mosul on Sunday. Picture: AFP

The leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics had a historic meeting on Saturday in the southern city of Najaf with Iraq’s top Shia Muslim cleric, the ­reclusive Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani who agreed that Iraq’s Christians should be able to live in peace.

“We all hope that this visit will be a good omen for the Iraqi people,” said Adnane Youssef, a Christian from northern Iraq. “We hope that it will lead to better days.”

The Christian community of Iraq, a Muslim-majority country of 40 million, has shrunk from 1.5 million before the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein to only 400,000 now.

“This very important visit will boost our morale after years of difficulties, problems and wars,” said an Iraqi Christian leader, ­Father George Jahoula.

Francis adjusts his cape in Mosul on Sunday. Picture: AFP

In 2014, when ISIS militants swept across one third of Iraq, Francis had said he was ready to come to meet the displaced and other victims of war.

Seven years later, after a stop on Sunday in the Kurdish north of Iraq, he saw for himself the devastated Old City of Mosul and ­efforts to rebuild it.

Francis also visited Qaraqosh, further east in the Nineveh Plain, which is one of Iraq’s oldest Christian towns.

It was largely destroyed in 2014 when ISIS rampaged through the area, but its residents have trickled back since 2017 and slowly worked at rebuilding their hometown. To honour the Pope, local artisans had woven a 2m prayer shawl, or stole, with the “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” prayers hand-stitched in golden thread in Syriac, a dialect of the language spoken by Jesus that is still used in Qaraqosh.

Security was extra tight in the north of Iraq, where state forces are still hunting ISIS remnants and sleeper cells.

Francis surrounded by dignitaries in Mosul on Sunday. Picture: AFP

Many thousands of troops and police have been deployed as the Pope has crisscrossed the country, taking planes, helicopters and armoured convoys.

The other major challenge is the COVID-19 pandemic, as Iraq has recently been in the grip of a second wave, with a record of more than 5000 cases in a day.

Iraqi authorities have imposed lockdown measures to control crowds, but thousands of faithful were expected to flock to a stadium late on Sunday in the northern city of Arbil to hear the Pope.

Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s oil-rich northern Kurdish region, has been a relative haven of stability and a place of refuge for many Christians who fled ISIS.

Several thousand seats in the Franso Hariri stadium will be left empty to avoid creating a superspreader event when Iraqis come to hear the Catholic leader, known here as “Baba al-Vatican”, deliver mass.

AFP

Pope Francis meets Ali al-Sistani. Picture: AFP