Breda O'Brien
Pope Francis is pictured with religious leaders during an interreligious meeting on the plain of Ur near Nasiriyah The View
Pope Francis is sometimes controversial but never boring. As John L. Allen of Crux Now put it, the pontiff’s current trip to Iraq is perhaps his most emblematic trip – if only because his stubborn streak ensured that it happened.
He ignored worries about super spreader Covid-19 events and security issues in order to draw attention to the forgotten Christians and other minorities in Iraq, and to advance interfaith relations.
The Vatican ambassador to Iraq, Archbishop Mitja Leskovar, along with several other staff members of the nunciature, tested positive just days before the visit and had to self-isolate. The timing was far from ideal given how central the nunciature would have been to planning the event.
Covid-19 has taken a serious toll on Iraq, with 703,778 infections including 13,458 deaths. Let us all pray that there is no major outbreak of Covid-19 as a result of the visit.
Iraq only started vaccinating two days before the Pope arrived, using 50,000 Sinopharm vaccines donated by China as part of China’s so-called vaccine diplomacy. Astutely, China is seeking to secure influence through the strategic deployment of Sinopharm vaccines. Iraq will also purchase a further two million doses from China.
It is a reminder of how much the troubled areas of the world have been ignored by the wealthy West when it comes to sharing vaccines, a gap which China is more than willing to fill. The West has had almost as little interest in looking out for religious minorities, or more accurately, Christians, in Iraq.
Pope Francis visited the small Christian community of Qaraqosh last Sunday, where only a fraction of families displaced by the ISIS attacks in 2014 have returned. His visit culminated with an open-air mass in Erbil, where about 10,000 attended. Those seated in the stands showed little evidence of social distancing, whereas the guests on the field were seated at least a metre apart.
Unfeigned
Yet the joy of Christians was unfeigned. They have endured torment not just since 2014 but since 2003 when the US, backed by the UK, launched an invasion of Iraq. It was not that Saddam Hussein, whose regime was toppled, was a particular friend to Christians but he was neutral enough to appoint Tariq Aziz, a Christian, as his deputy. Hussein encouraged inter-Christian conflict, however, when it suited his purposes.
By 2007, the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, was reporting that more than 2.2 million Iraqis had sought refuge in neighbouring countries, most of them in Syria and Jordan, while another two million Iraqis were internally displaced. Christians left the country in droves. Then came ISIS, who extended their so-called Caliphate into the Nineveh Plains, arriving in Qaraqosh in 2014, forcing virtually all Christians to flee.
ISIS persecuted other Muslims, especially Shi’a Muslims but anyone at all who did not conform to their brand of Salafi Islam, and of course, Yazidis and other minorities. Christians fell between stools because the US was reluctant to feed the narrative of a clash between Islam and Christianity, which it saw as a propaganda bonus for ISIS. The persecution of Christians never received due attention.
The defeat of ISIS in Iraq in 2017 did not bring an end to discrimination and displacement.
The famed Nineveh plains are one of the last places where Aramaic is spoken – not the Aramaic spoken by Jesus but the various dialects are the closest thing we have in the modern world to what the disciples would have heard. It is close to being wiped out.
The Pope wanted to travel to Iraq to highlight the martyrdom of Christians but also as a significant interfaith gesture.
Reached out
Perhaps more than any other Pope, he has reached out to Islam. The meeting with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is significant because Iraq is a Shi’a majority state. Francis signed a document of fraternity in 2019 with the respected Sunni leader, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Al-Azhar, in Cairo. (Islam has no central figure like the Pope, which is one of the reasons that dialogue is not easy.) Pope Francis declared that his encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, had been inspired in part by his dialogue with Grand Imam al-Tayeb, which certainly is a first in Catholic history.
Interfaith dialogue in all its forms is important to Francis but particularly between the Abrahamic religions. Who can forget the sight of Pope Francis, embracing his Argentinian-Jewish friend, Rabbi Abraham Skorka and his Argentinian-Muslim friend, Omar Abboud, on a pilgrimage to the Western Wall in 2014?
The reason that Pope Francis may have been willing to travel at a time when Covid-19 is still so rampant in Iraq is because he has longed for this visit for a very long time. It may not have been a prudent visit in public health terms but it is certainly prophetic.