Spies foiled assassination plots during historic Iraq visit, Pope Francis says
The visit, the first such trip to Iraq by a sitting pope, was at the time considered to be dangerous, with Iraq long riven by sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni Muslims.
Religious minorities such as Christians had also endured persecution from the Islamic State, or ISIS, which had been driven out a few years earlier.
The timing of the trip, during the coronavirus pandemic, added to the logistical complexities, with Iraqi authorities deploying thousands of extra police to protect the pope.
“The Covid-19 had not yet fully loosened its grip, even the nuncio to that country, Monsignor Mitja Leskovar, had just tested positive for the virus, and, above all, every source pointed to very high security risk profiles,” Francis wrote.
Despite the risk, “I felt the need to visit our grandfather Abraham, the common ancestor of Jews, Christians and Muslims,” he added.
With the former ISIS having lost most of its territory in Syria and northern Iraq by the end of 2019, the pope visited in the wake of the so-called caliphate’s violence in the region — particularly in Mosul, which had been a stronghold for the militant group.
Surrounded by the gray, hollowed-out shells of four churches, a jubilant crowd greeted the pope in the city, which witnessed the worst of the terrorist group’s rule, including beheadings and mass killings.
Iraq’s Christian minority, one of the oldest in the world, faced persecution under the rule of ISIS, with many members of the community forced to leave behind homes and churches the extremists had destroyed or commandeered.
The country’s Christian population fell to fewer than 250,000 from an estimated 1.4 million before the U.S. invasion of 2003, according to a 2019 report by the State Department.
The pope’s trip to Mosul went off without a hitch. When he passed over the devastated city in a helicopter, he wrote in “Hope,” it “presented itself to my eyes as an expanse of rubble” and “appeared to me from above as an X-ray of hatred.”
