Pope Francis will make a historic visit to Iraq in March, the Vatican said Monday, the first ever by a pontiff and which will include a trip to Mosul.
The 83-year-old has long spoken of his desire to visit the Middle Eastern country, where conflict has caused the number of Christians to fall dramatically over the past two decades. Between March 5 and 8 next year, Francis will “visit Baghdad, the plain of Ur… the city of Erbil, as well as Mosul and Qaraqosh in the plain of Nineveh,” spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement. The pope’s visit to the ancient city of Mosul in northern Iraq will be particularly significant, as the former stronghold of the Islamic State group. Iraq’s historic and diverse Christian communities have been devastated in the bloody sectarian warfare that followed the 2003 US-led invasion and the Islamic State group’s sweep through a third of the country in 2014. Communities of Assyrians, Armenians, Chaldeans, Protestants and more have all been directly targeted.
There are no reliable statistics on the number of Christians who fled Iraq during these consecutive waves of bloodshed. According to William Warda, co-founder of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organisation, Christians who have remained in Iraq number up to 400,000, down from 1.5 million in 2003.
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The trip will be the pope’s first abroad since the coronavirus outbreak hit Italy, and the Vatican said the programme would “take into consideration the evolution of the worldwide health emergency”.
Francis said last year that Iraq was on his list for 2020, but he was forced to cancel all foreign trips in June as coronavirus swept across the globe.
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Harrison Okafor
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Judith is a believer, a lover of Christ and a Gospel freak person. A passionate gospel blogger and press writer. I work with GospelHitsNaija.net Media, no 1 Gospel music platform.
