In Iraq, the pope hopes to encourage Christians, build bridges with Muslims

On his historic visit to Iraq in March, Pope Francis hopes to encourage his Christian flock, severely wounded by sectarian conflict and brutal attacks by the Islamic State, while building further bridges with Muslims by extending brotherly peace. The trip's papal logo reflects this, depicting Pope Francis with Iraq's famous Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a palm tree, and a dove carrying an olive branch above the Vatican and Iraq flags. The motto: "You are all brothers" is written in Arabic, Chaldean and Kurdish. The first ever papal visit to the biblical land of Iraq from 5 to 8 March is significant. For years, the pope has publicly expressed his concerns over the plight and persecution of Iraqi Christians and his patchwork of many religious minorities, including the Yazidis, who have suffered at the hands of Islamic State militants and been caught in the crosshairs of Sunnis and Shiite Muslim violence.

Tensions persist between the Shia-majority Iraqi community and the Sunni Muslim minority, with the latter now feeling deprived of civil rights after the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim who marginalized Shiites for 24 years under the his minority government. "I am the pastor of people who suffer," Pope Francis said at the Vatican before his visit. Earlier, the pope said he hoped Iraq could "face the future through the peaceful and shared pursuit of the common good by all elements of society, including religious, and not fall back into hostilities unleashed by the seething conflicts of the region. powers. "" The pope will come to say: 'Enough, enough war, enough violence; seeking peace and fraternity and the safeguarding of human dignity '”, said Cardinal Louis Sako, the patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Baghdad. The cardinal has reportedly worked for several years to see the pope's trip to Iraq come to fruition. Pope Francis "will bring us two things: comfort and hope, which until now have been denied to us," the cardinal said.

The majority of Iraqi Christians belong to the Chaldean Catholic Church. Others worship in the Syrian Catholic Church, while a modest number belong to the Latin, Maronite, Greek, Coptic and Armenian churches. There are also non-Catholic churches such as the Assyrian Church and Protestant denominations. Once there were about 1,5 million, hundreds of thousands of Christians fled sectarian violence after the ousting of Saddam as churches in Baghdad were bombed, kidnappings and other sectarian attacks exploded. They either headed north or left the country altogether. Christians were driven from their ancestral homeland in the Nineveh plain when the Islamic State conquered that region in 2014. A record number of Christians fled due to their atrocities until its release in 2017. Now, the number of Christians in Iraq has dropped to around 150.000. The uprooted Christian community, which claims apostolic origin and still uses Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, desperately wants to see its plight.

The Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Yousif Mirkis of Kirkuk estimates that between 40% and 45% of Christians "have returned to some of their ancestral villages, in particular Qaraqosh". There, the rebuilding of churches, homes and businesses is taking place mainly with funding from ecclesiastical and Catholic institutions, as well as the Hungarian and US governments, rather than Baghdad. For years, Cardinal Sako has lobbied the Iraqi government, dominated by the majority of Shia Muslim politicians, to treat Christians and other minorities as equal citizens with equal rights. He also hopes that Pope Francis' message of peace and fraternity in Iraq will crown the pontiff's inter-religious reach to the Muslim world in recent years, now extending his hand to Shiite Muslims. "When the head of the church speaks to the Muslim world, we Christians are shown appreciation and respect," said Cardinal Sako. A meeting for Pope Francis with one of the most authoritative figures in Shiite Islam, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, is significant in the papal effort to embrace the entire Islamic world. The meeting was confirmed by the Vatican. Iraqi Dominican Father Ameer Jaje, an expert on Shiite relations, said one hope would be that Ayatollah al-Sistani would sign a document, "On human brotherhood for world peace and coexistence", which invites Christians and Muslims to work together for peace. A highlight of Francis' visit to the United Arab Emirates in February 2019 was the signing of the fraternity document together with Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of al-Azhar University and the highest authority of Sunni Islam.

Father Jaje told the CNS by phone from Baghdad that "the meeting will certainly take place in Najaf, where al-Sistani is based". The city is located 100 miles south of Baghdad, a center of the spiritual and political power of Shia Islam as well as a pilgrimage site for Shia adherents. Long considered a force for stability despite his 90 years, Ayatollah al-Sistani's loyalty is to Iraq, as opposed to some co-religionists who look to Iran for support. He advocates the separation of religion and affairs of state. In 2017, he also urged all Iraqis, regardless of their religious affiliation or ethnicity, to fight to get rid of the Islamic State on behalf of their country. Observers believe that the pope's meeting with the Ayatollah could be highly symbolic for Iraqis, but especially for Christians, for whom the meeting could turn a page in their country's often tense interreligious relations.