Pope weighed Iraq risk, believes God will protect
Pope Francis said Monday he weighed the risks of a high-profile trip to Iraq during the coronavirus pandemic, but said he decided to go ahead with it after much prayer and belief that God would look out for the Iraqis who might get exposed.
Francis described his decision-making process en route home from Iraq amid concerns that his four-day visit, which featured oftentimes maskless crowds in packed churches, singing — could result in the spread of infections in a country with a fragile health care system and a sustained surge in new cases.
Francis said the idea of a trip “cooks over time in my conscience,” and that the pandemic was the issue that weighed most heavily on him. Francis has experienced close-up the ravages of COVID-19 in Europe given Italy has had one of the worst outbreaks in the world, with the official death toll soon to hit 100,000.
“I prayed a lot about this. And in the end I took the decision freely,” Francis said. “It came from inside. I said ‘He who makes me decide this way will look after the people.’ ”
“I took the decision this way, but after prayer and knowing the risks,” he said.
Francis on Monday wrapped up the first-ever papal trip to Iraq, which was aimed at bringing hope to the country’s marginalized Christian minority while boosting relations with the Shiite Muslim world.
At every turn of his trip, Francis urged Iraqis to embrace diversity — from Najaf in the south, where
he held a historic face-toface meeting with powerful Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to Nineveh to the north, where he met with Christian victims of the Islamic State group and heard their testimonies of survival.
But at every turn he also experienced crowds that often ignored social distancing norms and mask requirements, even though the Vatican and Iraqi church officials had promised anti-virus measures would be enforced.
Francis, the Vatican delegation and traveling media were vaccinated against COVID19, while most Iraqis haven’t been. Infectious disease experts had questioned the wisdom of such a trip given Iraq’s latest cases are being spurred by the more infectious strain that first appeared in the U.K.
Iraq recorded 4,068 infections Saturday, up significantly from infection rates at the start of the year. In total, 13,500 people have died among a total 720,000 confirmed infections.
While Francis said he prayed on the decision, it was clear the globe-trotting pope of the peripheries was also
getting antsy being cooped up in the Vatican for more than a year. He said he hoped he soon might be able to resume public audiences at the Vatican, which have been suspended for months, and hinted at a possible trip to Lebanon.
“After these months of imprisonment, and truly I felt a bit imprisoned, this for me is to live again,” he said of the chance to be close to his flock. “To live again because it’s touching the church, the holy people of God.”
In one of the historic highlights of the trip, Francis was invited into the home of the notoriously reclusive al-Sistani, among the most influential and revered Shiite clerics, and together they delivered a powerful message of peaceful coexistence and affirmed the rights of Iraqi Christians. The Vatican hopes the message can help preserve the place of the thinning Christian population in Iraq’s tapestry of faith and ethnic groups.
Francis said he was “honored” to have been received by al-Sistani, whom he called “a great man, a wise man, a man of God.”
Facebook said Monday that Albanian political parties should be transparent on how they finance their political advertising on its pages before next month’s election.
Facebook said that starting Thursday “all electoral and political ads in Albania must come from authorized advertisers and include “Paid for by” disclaimers.” They should be authorized in the country.
Albania holds a parliamentary election April 25.
A state trooper in Michigan has been charged with felonious assault for using a police dog to subdue an unarmed man for nearly four minutes in November, an encounter that authorities say left the man with bite injuries and was recorded on a police dash camera.
The trooper, Parker Surbrook, was suspended without pay and removed from the canine unit, said the Michigan State Police, which released the dash camera footage of the episode Friday.
Surbrook pleaded not guilty at an arraignment and was granted $5,000 bond, according to court records. A lawyer for the trooper said that his client’s use of force was justified and that dash camera video did not show the full context of the confrontation.