Pope Francis to go ahead with Iraq visit amid spike in terror attacks and coronavirus 

A worker hangs a poster welcoming Pope Francis outside the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Baghdad

Credit: SABAH ARAR /AFP

The Pope has said he will go ahead with a historic visit to Iraq this week as “the people cannot be let down for a second time”, despite concerns over a spate of recent terrorist attacks and the potential spread of coronavirus. 

Pope Francis said on Wednesday that he was determined to make the trip since a previous visit by his predecessor John Paul II was cancelled for security reasons in 2000.

"The day after tomorrow, God willing, I will go to Iraq for a three-day pilgrimage,” he announced in his weekly address at the Vatican. “For a long time I have wanted to meet these people who have suffered so much".

The 84-year-old Pontiff’s visit – the first by a Pope to Iraq — is seen as hugely significant by the country’s dwindling Christian community, who have suffered persecution and violence from Islamic extremists in recent years.

There are now estimated to be fewer than 400,000 Christians in Iraq, compared with 1.5 million before the US-led invasion in 2003.  

But the visit comes as Shia Muslim militias loyal to Iran have been blamed for a series of rocket attacks on American military bases and other targets, while Islamic State terrorists have re-emerged to stage a campaign of gun and bomb attacks against local security forces and civilians.

Early on Wednesday, at least 10 unguided rockets hit the Ain al-Assad air base in western Iraq that hosts American and Iraqi troops, leading to the death of a civilian contractor who suffered a heart attack.

The nationality of the contractor was not revealed, but it is the third fatality in less than a month from similar attacks, which last week prompted retaliatory air strikes by American jets on Kataeb Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed paramilitary group, along the Iraqi-Syrian border.

The Pope is due to visit sites in Baghdad and Mosul where Christians were persecuted by Islamic State and their forerunners. He will also meet Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, 90, a revered figure in Shia Islam, on Saturday in Najaf, and will preside over an interfaith gathering in Ur, regarded by many as the biblical birthplace of Abraham.

The three-day trip includes plans to hold a mass for up to 10,000 people at a sports stadium in Erbil, despite rising coronavirus infections in Iraq.

The Pope, his 20-member Vatican entourage and more than 70 journalists on the papal plane will all have been vaccinated against Covid-19, officials said, adding the pontiff will mostly travel in a covered car in order to deter crowds from gathering.

But Iraq only begun its own vaccination campaign on Tuesday, and experts fear the prospect of Erbil’s large-scale public event can only increase the risk of transmission.

Asked why the visit couldn’t be postponed, Matteo Bruni, the Vatican spokesman said yesterday that this was “the first possible moment for a journey like this” and that there is “an urgency” to go.

He defended the visit as an “act of love for this land, for its people and for its Christians”.