In rubble of Mosul, pope offers salve for wounds
In first papal visit to country, Francis has sought to tighten bonds between Catholic Church and Muslim world
AMOSUL, Iraq fter the Islamic State group took control of Mosul seven years ago and declared it the capital of its caliphate, the terrorist group sought to strike fear deep into the West by vowing to conquer Rome.
But with the Islamic State group pushed from the city, it was Pope Francis, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, who Sunday came to Mosul. In an extraordinary moment on the last full day of the first papal trip to Iraq, Francis went to the wounded heart of the country, directly addressing the suffering, persecution and conflict that have torn the nation apart.
“Now Rome has come here,” Ghazwan Yousif Baho, a local priest who invited Francis to Mosul, said as he awaited the pope’s arrival. “He will bring his blessing to spread peace and brotherhood. It’s the beginning of a new era.”
Other popes have dreamed of visiting Iraq, but Francis is the first to make the trip. In doing so, he has sought to protect an ancient but battered and shrunken Christian community, build relations with the Muslim world and reassert himself on the global stage after being grounded for more than a year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
After a prayer in Mosul for the dead, Francis went to the northern towns where many Christians live, visiting a church packed with jubilant — and often unmasked — faithful in Qaraqosh, home of the country’s largest Christian population.
He crossed into Iraqi Kurdistan in a long and heavily armed convoy protected by helicopters. It raced past sprawling refugee camps toward Irbil, where he ended the day celebrating a Mass for thousands in a stadium. There too, the flouting of social distancing restrictions raised concerns that the pope’s efforts to be close to his flock might endanger them.
But many Iraqi Christians have said that the chance to draw comfort and healing after years of incalculable misery outweighed the risk of contagion. The country’s trauma, and Francis’ efforts heal it, were on full display in Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city.
The pope arrived by helicopter. Below him, hollowed shells of mortared buildings and the rubble of houses stretched out like a vast quarry. Fighting between Islamic State militants and U.S.-backed Iraqi forces essentially flattened the once-vibrant and diverse city, leaving thousands of civilians dead.
“Mosul Welcomes You” read posters covering walls so pockmarked with bullet holes that it looked like a rash had broken out. Twisted wrought-iron railings jutted out from ruined buildings. Francis spoke in a public square surrounded by the remains of four churches of different Christian denominations, all badly damaged or destroyed.
Children dressed in white and teenagers waving olive branches formed a corridor for the pope’s arrival, and a chorus in traditional dress ululated loudly.
“The real identity of this city is that of harmonious coexistence between people of different backgrounds and cultures,” Francis said, adding that the shrinking of the Christian population in Mosul — one of the oldest communities of its kind in the world — and across the Middle East did “incalculable harm not just to the individuals and communities concerned but also to the society they leave behind.”
“How cruel it is that this country, the cradle of civilization, should have been a±icted by so barbarous a blow, with ancient places of worship destroyed,” Francis said. Thousands of Muslims, Christians and Yazidis, he said, “were cruelly annihilated by terrorism, and others forcibly displaced or killed.”
Mosul’s once-large Christian population dwindled to a few thousand in the years after the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, and in 2014 ISIS expelled those who remained. Only about 350 Christians have returned since ISIS was driven out in 2017 — almost all of them to the more prosperous east side, which suffered far less damage.
“I especially welcome, then, your invitation to the Christian community to return to Mosul,” said Francis, who has praised young volunteers, Muslim and Christian, working to rebuild churches and mosques.
“I am sure it will be a first step for them to come back,” said Anas Zeyad, a Muslim engineer who is part of an international project to rebuild the churches. He said Christians who had fled the city “have memories, they have Muslim friends, they have homes here.” After praying for the dead, and for the repentance of their killers, Francis, who suffers from sciatica and limps heavily, took a golf cart to the Syriac Catholic Church that ISIS had used as a courthouse.
“We were living here in Mosul, all together, Christians, Muslims,” said Rana Bazzoiee, 37, a Christian and a pediatric surgeon, who fled Mosul before the ISIS takeover in 2014. She said that, while a semblance of normalcy had returned to the city, the pope’s visit could improve things further. “Why not?” she said. “We lived together for a long time in Mosul.”