BAGHDAD (AP) — The death of Pope Francis has sent shockwaves through Iraq’s Christian community, where his presence once brought hope after one of the darkest chapters in the country’s recent history.
His 2021 visit to Iraq, the first ever by a pope, came after years of conflict and displacement. Just a few years before that, many Iraqi Christians had fled their homes as Islamic State militants swept across the country.
Christian communities in Iraq, once numbering over a million, had already been reduced to a fraction of their former number by decades of conflict and mass emigration.
In Mosul, the site of some of the fiercest battles between Iraqi security forces and the Islamic State, Chaldean Archbishop Najeeb Moussa Michaeel recalled the pope’s visit to the battle-scarred city at a time when many visitors were still afraid to come as a moment of joy, “like a wedding for the people of Mosul."
“He broke this barrier and stood firm in the devastated city of Mosul, proclaiming a message of love, brotherhood, and peaceful coexistence,” Michaeel said.
As Francis delivered a speech in the city’s al-Midan area, which had been almost completely reduced to rubble, the archbishop said, he saw tears falling from the pope’s eyes.
Sa’dullah Rassam, who was among the Christians who fled from Mosul in 2014 in the face of the IS offensive, was also crying as he watched the pope leave the church in Midan that day.
Rassam had spent years displaced in Irbil, the seat of northern Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region, but was among the first Christians to return to Mosul, where he lives in a small house next to the church that Francis had visited.
As the pope's convoy was leaving the church, Rassam stood outside watching, tears streaming down his face. Suddenly the car stopped, and Francis got out to greet him.
“It was the best day of my life,” Rassam said. The pope's visit “made us feel loved and heard, and it helped heal our wounds after everything that happened here," he said.
The visit also helped to spur a drive to rebuild the city’s destroyed sites, including both Muslim and Christian places of worship.
“After the wide international media coverage of his visit, many parties began to invest again in the city. Today, Mosul is beginning to rise again,” Michaeel said. “You can see our heritage reappear in the sculptures, the churches and the streets.”
Building ties across communities
Chaldean Patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako told The Associated Press that Francis had built strong relationships with the Eastern rite churches — which are often forgotten by their Latin rite counterparts — and with Muslim communities.
The patriarch recalled urging Francis early in his papacy to highlight the importance of Muslim-Christian coexistence.
After the pope’s inaugural speech, in which he thanked representatives of the Jewish community for their presence, Sako said, “I asked him, ‘Why didn’t you mention Muslims?’... He said, ‘Tomorrow I will speak about Muslims,’ and indeed he did issue a statement the next day."
Francis went on to take “concrete steps to strengthen relationships” between Christians and Muslims through visits to Muslim-majority countries — including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan as well as Iraq — Sako said. “He brought Muslims and Christians together around shared values.”
His three-day visit to Iraq “changed Iraq’s face — it opened Iraq to the outside world,” Sako said, while “the people loved him for his simplicity and sincerity.”
The patriarch said that three months before the pope’s death, he had given him a gift of dates from Iraq, and Francis responded that he “would never forget Iraq and that it was in his heart and in his prayers.”
During his visit to Iraq, Francis held a historic meeting with the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, at the latter’s home in Najaf.
Sistani’s office in a statement Monday expressed “deep sorrow” at the pope’s death, saying he was “greatly respected by all for his distinguished role in serving the causes of peace and tolerance, and for expressing solidarity with the oppressed and persecuted across the globe.”
The meeting between the two religious leaders had helped to “promote a culture of peaceful coexistence, reject violence and hatred, and uphold values of harmony based on safeguarding rights and mutual respect among followers of different religions and intellectual traditions,” it said.
“Our favorite pope”
In Irbil, Marvel Rassam recalled joining the crowds who packed into a stadium to catch a glimpse of the pope.
The visit brought a sense of unity, Rassam said, “as everyone attended to see him, and not only the Catholics.”
“He was our favorite pope, not only because he was the first to visit Iraq, but he was also very special and unique for his humility and inclusivity,” he said.
At St. Joseph Chaldean Cathedral in Baghdad, where Francis led a Mass during his 2021 visit, church pastor Nadhir Dako said the pope's visit had carried special weight because it came at a time when Christians in Iraq were still processing the trauma of the IS attacks.
“We, the Christians, were in very difficult situation. There was frustration due to the forcible migration and the killing that occurred," Dako said. "The visit by the pope created a sort of determination for all Iraqis to support their Christian brothers.”
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Martany reported from Irbil, Iraq.
Qassim Abdul-zahra And Stella Martany, The Associated Press
