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Pope Francis has arrived in Iraq for his first papal visit there and his first international trip since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Covid 19 and fear of security have made this visit the most dangerous so far, but the 84-year-old insisted it was “obligated“.
He will try to reassure the Christian community and promote interfaith dialogue by meeting with Iraq’s most respected Muslim cleric. The pope will also celebrate Mass at a stadium in Irbil in the north.
Some 10,000 Iraqi security forces have been deployed to protect the pope, and curfews are being set to limit Covid’s spread. Pope Francis said he was happy to be traveling again, adding: “This is an iconic journey and it is a duty to a land that has been martyred for so many years“.
He had previously said that Iraqi Christians could not “left in the mud a second time“After Pope John Paul II canceled plans for the trip in 1999 when talks with the then government of President Saddam Hussein were interrupted.
Two decades after that, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world has seen a huge decline, from 1.4 million to about 250,000. Many have fled the country to escape the violence that has plagued the country since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.
Thousands of civilians were also displaced when Islamic State militants invaded northern Iraq in 2014, destroying their historic churches, confiscating their property and giving them the choice to pay a tax, to return, to return. to leave or to face death.
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