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- By choosing Iraq and its war-torn — and now Covid-threatened — lands as his first destination, Francis plunged directly into the issues of war and peace, poverty, and religious strife in an ancient and biblical land. His trip is explicitly designed to deepen ties to Shiite Muslims and encourage a decimated Christian population.
www.nytimes.com › 2021/03/05 › world
Mar 4, 2021 · The pope will be formally welcomed by Iraq’s head of state, President Barham Salih, a Kurdish politician who previously met Francis in Rome and has made minority rights a priority.
Dec 15, 2020 · Pope Francis goes to Iraq at a time when his predecessors were unable to do so due to the complexities of the pressing conditions that prevailed recently, including wars, sectarian violence, terrorist attacks, and the complexities of the political affairs in that fraternal country.
Mar 4, 2021 · The pope wants to use this trip not only to support the Christian Iraqis, but to reach out to all the religious communities in Iraq. In Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, who is a prophet important to ...
- Long-Held Desire
- Years in The Making
- Preserving Christians Presence
- Amid Difficult Times
- Hope Springs Eternal
Pope Francis has long expressed his desire to visit Iraq. Already on 10 June 2019 he told a meeting of Catholic aid agenciesthat he planned on traveling there in 2020. “I think constantly of Iraq – where I want to go next year – in the hope that it can face the future through the peaceful and shared pursuit of the common good on the part of all ele...
The Pope’s visit will come as the realization of a dream of his predecessor, Pope St. John Paul II. The Polish Pope had planned to travel to Iraq at the end of 1999. That trip never took place because Saddam Hussein decided to postpone it, after months of negotiations. According to Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, the Patriarch of Babylon of the Chalde...
Preparations for Pope Francis’ visit seemed to be nearing completion early this year, when he met the President of Iraq, Barham Salih, at an audience in the Vatican on 25 January. The Holy See Press Office said at the time that the two spoke about “preserving the historical presence of Christians in the country” and “highlighting the need to guaran...
Christians’ presence in Iraq, however, has been drastically diminished in the past two decades. In 2003, before a US-led coalition invaded to depose Saddam Hussein, there were around 1 to 1.4 million Christians in the country. A drawn-out war and the 2014-2017 occupation of the Plain of Nineveh by the so-called Islamic State reduced their number to...
Yet, the dream of recovery has been impeded by an economic crisis, corruption, and the plight of 1.7 million internally displaced people. UNICEF, the UN children’s aid agency, estimates that some 4 million Iraqis require humanitarian assistance, of whom half are children. Add in the Covid-19 pandemic and the situation remains dire in a country of o...
The Pope Francis visited parts of northern Iraq once held by Islamic State (IS) militants on the third day of his historic trip to the country.
Mar 10, 2021 · Francis is the first sitting pope to visit Iraq, but not for lack of effort. Both Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI attempted to visit, but could not due to conflict and war within Iraq.
Mar 9, 2021 · Pope Francis’s historic trip to Iraq, including visits to the war-torn north, has been deeply significant. It is one that needs to be seen in the context of peace rather than politics.
