UR, Iraq – The first Pope Francis appeared at the modest residence of the most secluded and powerful Shiite religious cleric in Iraq for a delicate and meticulously negotiated summit. Hours later, he presided over a stage packed with religious leaders on the windswept plains of Ur, a vast and now barren extension where believers believe that God revealed Himself to the Prophet Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions.
In intimate and theatrical settings, in concrete and symbolic gestures, Pope Francis on Saturday sought to protect his persecuted flock, forging closer ties between the Roman Catholic Church and the Muslim world, a mission that is a central theme of his papacy and his historic trip to Iraq.
Upon meeting Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the holy city of Najaf, Francisco stuck a political needle, seeking an alliance with an extraordinarily influential Shiite cleric who, unlike his Iranian colleagues, believes that religion should not rule the state .
In Ur, his speech, in the face of a 4,000-year-old clay brick ziggurat with a temple dedicated to a moon god, added biblical and emotional resonance to the day.
The meetings, church officials said, were two parts of the same play.
“Of course they are going together,” said Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state and second-highest official after the pope, in a brief interview.
“There is a direct link to what is happening here,” he said, pointing to the stage in Ur, “and the meeting with al-Sistani.”
Cardinal Parolin spoke at the end of a tour of the structure of what the faithful believe to be Abraham’s home. Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had it rebuilt with new brick walls and arches.
As he took the stage, Francis rode from an airport in the provincial capital, Nasiriya, a center of ongoing anti-government protests, passing miles of blast walls, Iraq and Vatican flags hanging from barbed wire fences and pickup trucks loaded with soldiers and machine guns are mounted. He arrived on the stage surrounded by AstroTurf and red carpets, a bright spot hastily assembled on the desert plain, and went up to a stage.
“This blessed place brings us back to our origins,” said Francis, adding. “It looks like we’re coming home.”
The pope is visiting Iraq despite concerns that the trip and any major meetings could cause an over-spreading event in a country that is experiencing an increase in coronavirus cases. Francisco wore a mask in some places, but not in others, and the people who gathered to see him – sometimes crowded shoulder to shoulder – did not always wear them.
In Ur, the elders who surrounded the pope spoke of the difficulties that religious minorities in Iraq suffered.
“I am an Iraqi Sabean Mandean who witnessed my children, brothers, all relatives fleeing,” said Rafah Alhilali, whose monotheistic faith shares some elements with Christianity and has St. John the Baptist as his central prophet.
Sheikh Faroq Khalil, a member of the Yazidi spiritual council, said that Francis promised him that he would pray for the protection of his persecuted minority.
But some once vibrant communities had already essentially disappeared completely from Iraq, including Abraham’s Jewish descendants, and were absent from the meeting.
Reverend Albert Hisham, coordinator of the papal visit to the Catholic Church in Iraq, said the planners had contacted some of the twelve Iraqi Jews they could identify, but had received no response.
There is a fear among many Iraqi Christians, who until the middle of the 20th century made up about 10 percent of the population, that they might face the same fate. Between 2003, the year of the United States-led invasion, and 2010, more than half of Iraq’s Christians left the country, leaving around 500,000 of a maximum of possibly 1.4 million.
In 2014, the expansion of the Islamic State, or ISIS, led to more persecution and migration, and Christians today make up just over one percent of the population.
As the strong winds across the Plains of Ur raised the red carpets in the air and threw sand over a small crowd and several empty places, Francis let out an unadulterated cry for peace and brotherly love. In doing so, he fulfilled a dream nurtured by John Paul II, who tried to come here 20 years ago and “wept,” said Francisco, when political tensions forced him to cancel.
Francisco argued that “the greatest blasphemy is to profane” the name of God “by hating our brothers and sisters”.
“Hostility, extremism and violence are not born out of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion,” he added. “We believers cannot remain silent when terrorism abuses religion; in fact, we are called upon unmistakably to dispel all misunderstandings. “
He referred to himself and others as “descendants of Abraham and representatives of different religions” and said that, as “the great Patriarch, we must make concrete steps ”towards peace.
Later, on Saturday, Francis delivered a sermon at the Chaldean Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad, invoking similar themes for the common good. “Love is our strength,” he said to the crowded congregation, and as he left the cathedral people were shouting, “Long live, long daddy!”
Cardinal Louis Raphael I Sako called the pope’s visit “a turning point in relations between Christians and Muslims”.
In 2019, in Abu Dhabi, Francisco signed a joint declaration on human brotherhood with Sunni leaders at the University and Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, one of the main centers of Sunni Islamic learning. His efforts this time to add Shiites to the equation, meeting with Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq with a Shiite majority, upset some Sunni officials.
A senior Iraqi official said the pope agreed to a brief meeting on Friday that had not previously been scheduled with Mohammed al-Halbousi, the president of Iraq’s parliament and a Sunni Muslim Arab, to ease the concerns of many in the Sect of that their concerns were being ignored. Vatican officials on Saturday night confirmed that the meeting had taken place.
But the Shias were Francisco’s focus on Saturday and the impulse of his trip, officially with the theme “You are all brothers”.
“It is a way to rediscover a deep sense of unity that must exist between these three religions and the collaboration that must be created between the members of these religions,” said Cardinal Parolin.
Najaf is the tomb of Imam Ali, considered by Shia Muslims as the legitimate successor to the Prophet Muhammad. The sanctuary was closed to pilgrims for the first time in years because of the pope’s visit.
The pope walked down an alley that was barely wide enough for his party near the ayatollah’s house. Makeshift electricity lines hung from the houses, some with windows covered with folded metal bars. There was no shouting or singing. But in many ways, the meeting between Francis and the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq was one of the most critical aspects of the pontiff’s turbulent trip to Iraq.
The two elders, Ayatollah Sistani, 90 years old and dressed in black tunics, and Francisco, 84 years old, in his white cassock, each the highest religious authority among his followers, sat face to face with socks on their feet . Neither was photographed wearing a mask. Francis is vaccinated. Ayatollah Sistani is not. His office said he believes vaccination is religiously permitted, but he did not want to jump in front of others.
The Vatican, in his statement on the meeting, said the pope thanked the clergyman “for speaking – together with the Shiite community – in defense of the most vulnerable and persecuted in the midst of violence and great suffering”.
The visit signaled to Shiite Muslim leaders that Christians must be respected.
Although Ayatollah Sistani was born in Iran, his pronouncements about Iraq carry great weight. He managed to promote the elections, and his withdrawal of support for the former Iraqi prime minister, who he felt was disappointing the people, left the prime minister with little choice but to resign.
Ayatollah Sistani’s 2014 religious edict urging healthy men to join security forces to fight the Islamic State group resulted in an explosion of recruitment for Shiite militias, many of them closely linked to Iran. rival, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Ayatollah Sistani believes in the separation of politics and religion – as long as politics do not break Islamic principles. He is, in a way, an ideal interlocutor for Francis: holy, trustworthy and powerful. Your decisions have weight.
The meeting between the two religious leaders lasted longer than expected. A statement released by Ayatollah Sistani’s office said the cleric emphasized that Christian citizens deserve “to live like all Iraqis in security and peace and with full constitutional rights”.
Jason Horowitz reported from Ur, Jane Arraf from Erbil.