The pope’s four-day trip is intended to nurture ties with Shiite Muslims and encourage a Christian population decimated by years of strife.
Pope Francis made an audacious return to the world stage in the midst of the pandemic on Friday when he became the first leader of the Roman Catholic church to visit Iraq, seeking to help heal a nation uniquely wounded by violent sectarianism, foreign adventurism and the persecution of minority populations, including his own Christian flock. “I’m happy to travel again,” Francis, who has been vaccinated against the coronavirus, said after taking off his blue surgical mask to address reporters on the papal plane. The 84-year-old pontiff, who suffers from sciatica, was limping noticeably as he walked off the plane and past a line of young people singing in languages including Aramaic, the language of Jesus. 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. But more broadly, it also sent the message that, after a year of being cooped up in Rome and fading from public consciousness, Francis wanted to elevate his profile and spend his time with those who have suffered the most. “This trip is emblematic,” he said on the plane. “It’s a duty to a land martyred for many years.” After decades of dictatorship and more than a decade of sanctions, the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein sparked a security vacuum and the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The country descended into civil war. A decade later, the Islamic State took over a third of the country. Iraq is still struggling to recover. In Baghdad, the pope traveled through empty, locked-down streets, in a bubble of extraordinary security precautions. Military helicopters hovered overhead. Heavily armed soldiers lined avenues decorated with Vatican flags and “Mesopotamia Greets You” signs. They kept watch from rooftops wherever the pope stopped. The pope’s visit coincided with a recent return of suicide bombings, increased rocket attacks and renewed geopolitical tensions, and some of Francis’ admirers worry that his whirlwind four-day visit will exacerbate a recent spike in the country’s coronavirus cases by drawing crowds. But his advisers and Iraq’s top prelates insisted social distancing measures would be followed and argued the trip was necessary to show Francis’ closeness to a flock that had suffered terribly. The pope’s predecessors dreamed of visiting, but those aspirations were dashed by tensions and conflict. Francis instead seemed determined to go no matter what on a trip that on Friday he called “long-awaited and desired.” To highlight and touch the wounds of his church, Francis went on Friday afternoon to Our Lady of Salvation, a Syriac Catholic church where Islamic militants staged a harrowing attack in 2010, slaughtering 58 people in what was the worst atrocity against Iraqi Christians since the U.
