Blessed are the persecuted, says pontiff in first Chaldean rite Mass

At a Mass in Baghdad, Pope Francis reminded Iraq’s Chaldean Catholics of one of the core tenets of their faith: those who are persecuted, poor and mourn are blessed.

The Pope held a Mass for Iraq’s persecuted Christians at the Chaldean Catholic Cathedral of St Joseph in Baghdad. It was the first Mass celebrated by a pope using the Chaldean rite familiar to most Iraqi Catholics.

His homily focused on the messages of love, patience, and bearing witness.

“Love is our strength, the source of strength for those of our brothers and sisters who here too have suffered prejudice, indignities, mistreatment and persecutions for the name of Jesus,” he said.

He told members of the congregation to follow the teachings of Jesus and the Beatitudes taken from Jesus’s sermon that in God’s eyes – those who are blessed are not the wealthy, powerful or famous, but “the poor, those who mourn, the persecuted”.

In his sermon, he called on Iraqis to hold steady in the face of adversity, to stay patient, and to continue the heroism of bearing witness to the world around them.

“Today I thank God with you and for you,” he said. “Because here where witnesses arose in ancient times, witnesses rise here in our own time often overlooked by the news, yet precious in God’s eyes, witnesses who by living the Beatitudes are helping God fulfil his promises of peace.”

Other speakers during the Mass, conducted largely in Arabic, continued with the theme of love and patience.

Pope Francis is in Iraq to give a spiritual boost to its dwindling Christian communities who were forced from their homes by years of bloodshed, persecution and then by ISIS. They face continued threat from Shiite militias.

Chaldean Catholics are believed to represent about 80 per cent of the estimated 300,000 Christians left in Iraq.

Despite concerns about the risk of coronavirus infections, the church was full and stuffy with incense. A maskless choir sang hymns and chanted verses from the Bible.

Pope Francis, who is vaccinated against the coronavirus, did not wear a mask, but priests and members of the congregation did.

The cathedral in Baghdad’s Karrada district was built to meet the needs of the Chaldean community who moved there from the old district of Agd Al Nasara, which was served by the Cathedral of Mary Mother of Sorrows, known as Umm Al Ahzan, in the 1950s.

The foundation stone of the cathedral was laid by the Patriarch of the Chaldeans, Yusef VII Ghanima, on Holy Cross Day in 1952 and consecrated three years later.

The cathedral has been restored and embellished several times since then, including in 2018 by the current Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans, Louis Raphael Sako.

Funds for the new cathedral were raised by a committee while it was being built. The same committee also supervised the construction.

The cathedral was built near the site of a small shrine, called Mar Yousef, in the grounds of the Chaldean Mercy organisation, which also ran a school there.

Both the shrine and the school have since closed and have been replaced by a large community centre.