Pope to take a piece of Iraq with him
Capping his first day in Iraq, Pope Francis was gifted a miniature of an extraordinary work of art depicting a stage on the path to Christ’s crucifixion, designed by a Muslim artist.
It was a touching welcome gift from President Barham Saleh, who invited Pope Francis to visit Iraq in 2019 — hoping it could help the country “heal” after years of strife.
The bronze plaque received by Francis is a potent symbol of the struggles of Iraq’s ancient Christian community, as well as the country’s exceptional interfaith links.
It is a small replica of the sixth “Station of the Cross”, where a woman named Veronica wipes Jesus’s brow as he makes the torturous 14-stage journey up the hill to be crucified.
Fourteen stone plaques of the journey were designed by Mohammed Ghani Hikmat, one of Iraq’s most celebrated sculptors who passed away in 2011.
Work on the replica crafted in the Lebanese capital Beirut was personally overseen by his son Yasser, who kept its existence a secret until it was presented to Francis.
“It’s very symbolic of Iraq, because my father was an Arab Muslim sculptor who recounted through his works the passion of Christ,” Hikmat told reporters.
“It represents all of Iraq in that there’s no difference between any of the sects,” he said. The original stone works — imposing at two metres tall by a metre wide — indeed tell the story of Iraq.
To make them, Hikmat locked himself away in his studio and entered what he would later describe as a “mystic trance”.
Hikmat sourced the stone from the northern plains of Nineveh province, the heartland of Iraq’s minorities and where some Christian villages still speak a modern dialect of the language used by Jesus two millennia ago. —