Despite pandemic, Pope Francis reaches out to Christians and Muslims in Iraq

National Post, 06 March 2021

Papal travel is no longer remarkable. But Iraq is a first.

Regarding travel, there are very few papal firsts left. Ever since Pope St. Paul VI travelled to the Holy Land in 1964 — the first foreign papal trip since the 19th century — the pace of papal travel has accelerated to the point where it is now no longer remarkable. But Iraq is a first.

Pope Francis arrived in Iraq on Friday morning for a three-day visit. His determination to make the trip was personal; the general view in Rome was that he should wait until COVID-19 cases stop surging. The Vatican’s own ambassador in Baghdad was just infected and will spend the visit in isolation.

But Francis is determined and his trip has three purposes.

The first is to comfort and strengthen the Christian community in Iraq. Before the second Iraq War in 2003, there were some 1.4 million Christians in Iraq; today, there are only about 250,000. Many fled in the upheaval after the American invasion; most of those remaining left when the Islamic State took over parts of the country between 2014 and 2017 and began a campaign of ruthless anti-Christian massacres and persecution.

The nadir of anti-Christian bloodletting took place in 2010, during the Divine Liturgy at the Syro-Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad, where dozens were massacred as they worshipped. Pope Francis made that church his first pastoral visit upon arrival. The papal visit is an act of solidarity with local Christians.

Second, the trip completes the manifest desire of Pope St. John Paul II. For the Great Jubilee year of 2000, John Paul planned a series of biblical pilgrimages. He went to Egypt — land of the exodus —  and then made his epic Holy Land visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He completed it in 2001 with a voyage in the footsteps of St. Paul to Syria, Greece and Malta.

John Paul had wanted to begin in Iraq, with a visit to the biblical city Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abraham, but Saddam Hussein made it impossible for him to go. Pope Francis, on the eve of his departure to Iraq, made reference to those frustrated plans and said that he would not “keep the people waiting twice.”

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