Pope Francis on Iraq visit calls for end to extremism and violence

Pope Francis began his most risky foreign trip on Friday, flying into Iraq amid the tightest security ever seen for a papal visit to appeal to the country’s leaders and people to end militant violence and religious strife.

 

Thousands of security personnel were deployed by Iraq to protect him during the visit, which comes after a spate of rocket and suicide bomb attacks and a spike in COVID-19 cases.

 

At the official welcome in the presidential palace, the 84-year-old Francis, limping from what appeared to be a fresh flare-up of his painful sciatica, made an impassioned call for Iraqi to finally give peacemakers chance.

 

“May the clash of arms be silenced ... may there be an end to acts of violence and extremism,” he said.

 

President Barham Salih thanked the pope for making the first-ever papal visit to Iraq “despite the many recommendations to delay” because of the pandemic and other challenges in “our wounded country”.

 

The fact that the pope came anyway “multiplies the value of this visit for the Iraqi people”, the president said.

 

On Sunday Francis travels north to Mosul, a former stronghold of Islamic State, where churches and other buildings there still bear the scars of conflict.

 

Source: Reuters
-Agencies