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Pope Francis arrives to pray for war victims at ‘Hosh al-Bieaa’, Church Square, in Mosul’s old city.
Pope Francis who began an historic visit to Iraq on Friday, was the first pontiff to visit the birthplace of the Eastern churches from where more than a million Christians have fled over the past 20 years.
The pope’s visit has a highly symbolic value given the importance of Iraqi Christians in the history of the faith and their cultural and linguistic legacy dating back to the time of ancient Babylon, nearly 4,000 years ago.
The systematic persecution of Iraqi Christians at the hands of al-Qaeda and then ISIL (ISIS) in more recent years has pushed tens of thousands to leave and is threatening the community’s survival.
Francis met the dwindling Christian communities of Baghdad, Mosul and Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian city in the Nineveh Plains, where, in 2014, the ISIL armed group wiped out the remnants of the Christian presence that had survived al-Qaeda’s violent campaigns, causing tens of thousands to flee and find refuge in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
In Erbil, the pope met the Kurdish authorities and some of the 150,000 Christian refugees from central Iraq.
Pope Francis prayed for “victims of war” outside a ruined church in Iraq’s Mosul, where ISIL ravaged one of the world’s oldest Christian communities until its defeat three years ago.
AJ
