Pope Francis arrives in Baghdad for risky, historic Iraq tour

An Alitalia plane carrying him, his entourage, a security detail, and about 75 journalists, touched down at Baghdad International Airport slightly ahead of schedule just before 2 p.m. local time.

Iraq is deploying thousands of additional security personnel to protect the 84-year-old pope during the visit, which comes after a spate of rocket and suicide bomb attacks raised fears for his safety.

“I am happy to be making trips again,” he said in brief comments to reporters aboard his plane, alluding to the coronavirus pandemic which has prevented him from travelling. The Iraq trip is his first outside Italy since November 2019.

“This is an emblematic trip and it is a duty towards a land that has been martyred for so many years,” Francis said, before donning a mask and greeting each reporter individually, without shaking hands.

Francis’s whirlwind tour will take him by plane, helicopter and possibly armoured car to four cities, including areas that most foreign dignitaries are unable to reach, let alone in such a short space of time.

He will say Mass at a Baghdad church, meet one of Iraq’s top cleric in the southern city of Najaf and travel north to Mosul, where the army had to empty the streets for security reasons last year for a visit by Iraq’s prime minister.

Mosul is a former militant Islamic State stronghold, and churches and other buildings there still bear the scars of conflict.

Violence and hope

Since the defeat of the Islamic State militants in 2017, Iraq has seen a greater degree of security, though violence persists, often in the form of rocket attacks by Iran-aligned militias on U.S. targets, and US military action in response.

On Wednesday 10 rockets landed on an airbase that hosts U.S., coalition and Iraqi forces. Hours later, Francis reaffirmed he would travel to Iraq.

The militant Islamic State also remains a threat. In January, a suicide attack claimed by the Sunni militant group killed 32 people in Baghdad’s deadliest such attack for years.

Francis will meet clergy at a Baghdad church where militants killed more than 50 worshippers in 2010. Violence against Iraq’s minority religious groups, especially when a third of the country was being run by militant Islamic State, has reduced its ancient Christian community to a fifth of its once 1.5 million people.

The pontiff will also visit Ur, the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, who is revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews, and meet Iraq’s revered top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, 90-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

The meeting with Sistani, who wields great influence over Iraq’s Shi’ite majority and in the country’s politics, will be the first by a pope.

Some militant groups have opposed the pope’s visit, framing it as Western interference in Iraq’s affairs, but many Iraqis hope that it can help foster a fresh view of Iraq.

“It might not change much on the ground, but at least if the pope visits, people will see our country in a different light, not just bombs and war,” said Ali Hassan, a 30-year-old Baghdad resident picking up relatives at the airport.