You could be forgiven for taking a cynical view of Pope Francis’s visit to Iraq this weekend. How could the Pope’s rhetoric about ‘fraternity’ alter the brutal reality for the country’s Christians, whose population has dwindled from 1.3 million to 200,000 since the US-led invasion? Might the visit end up legitimising a political class that has failed to defend Christians against discrimination and jihadist persecution? Even the Archbishop of Erbil bluntly remarked that the first papal trip to Iraq was ‘not going to help Christians materially or directly, because we are really in a very corrupt political and economic system. No doubt about that. [Pope Francis] will hear nice words… But when it comes to day-to-day issues, no, I think that’s a different story.’
Yet from the moment of the Pope’s arrival on Friday at Baghdad’s Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation, where he was greeted by a spectacular display of dancers and swordsmen before leading the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in Arabic, a more optimistic note emerged.
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