Pope’s peace plea in historic Iraq visit

WORLD: Pope Francis made an appeal for peaceful coexistence in Iraq as he prayed for the country’s war dead amid the ruins of four churches in Mosul, which suffered destruction in the war against Islamic State.

Francis travelled to northern Iraq on the final day of his historic visit to minister to the country’s Christians.

POPE FRANCIS made an emphatic appeal for peaceful coexistence in Iraq on Sunday as he prayed for the country’s war dead amid the ruins of four demolished churches in Mosul, which suffered widespread destruction in the war against the Islamic State group.

Francis travelled to northern Iraq on the final day of his historic visit to minister to the country’s dwindling number of Christians, who fled en masse when IS militants overtook vast swathes of northern Iraq in the summer of 2014.

Few have returned since IS was routed in 2017, and Francis came to Iraq to encourage them to stay and help rebuild the country and restore what he called its “intricately designed carpet” of faith and ethnic groups.

For the Vatican, the continued presence of Christians in Iraq is vital to keeping alive faith communities that have existed in the country since the time of Christ.

In a scene unimaginable just four years ago, the pontiff mounted a stage in a city square surrounded by the remnants of four heavily damaged churches belonging to some of Iraq’s myriad Christian rites and denominations.

“How cruel it is that this country, the cradle of civilisation, should have been afflicted by so barbarous a blow, with ancient places of worship destroyed and many thousands of people – Muslims, Christians, Yazidis – who were cruelly annihilated by terrorism and others forcibly displaced or killed,” Francis said.

He deviated from his prepared speech to address the plight of Iraq’s Yazidi minority, which was subjected to mass killings, abductions and sexual slavery at the hands of IS.

“Today, however, we reaffirm our conviction that fraternity is more durable than fratricide, that hope is more powerful than hatred, that peace more powerful than war.”

The square where he spoke is home to four different churches – Syro-Catholic, Armenian-Orthodox, Syro-Orthodox and Chaldean – each of them left in ruins.

IS overran Mosul in June 2014 and declared a caliphate stretching from territory in northern Syria deep into Iraq’s north and west.

It was from Mosul’s al-Nuri mosque that the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, made his only public appearance when he gave a Friday sermon calling on all Muslims to follow him as “caliph”.

Mosul held deep symbolic importance for IS and became the bureaucratic and financial backbone of the group. It was finally liberated in July 2017 after a ferocious nine-month battle.

Al-Baghdadi was killed in a US raid in Syria in 2019.

The Vatican hopes that Francis’s landmark visit will rally the country’s Christian communities and encourage them to stay despite decades of war and instability.

Gutayba Aagha, the Muslim head of the Independent Social and Cultural Council for the Families of Mosul, encouraged other Christians to return.

Francis later travel by helicopter across the Nineveh plains to the small Christian community of Qaraqosh, where only a fraction of families have returned after fleeing the IS onslaught.

He ended the day with a Mass in the stadium in Irbil, in the semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, which was expected to draw as many as 10,000 people.

How cruel it is that this country should have been afflicted... Pope Francis speaking in Mosul in Iraq, which was left devastated by Islamic State