A Vatican judge on Saturday ordered 10 people, including an Italian cardinal, to stand trial for alleged financial crimes including embezzlement, money laundering, fraud, extortion and abuse of office.

Those indicted include Cardinal Angelo Becciu as well as the former heads of the Vatican’s financial intelligence unit and two Italian brokers involved in the Vatican’s purchase of a building in a luxury area of London.

Becciu, who Pope Francis fired last year and who has always maintained his innocence during a two-year investigation, became the highest ranking Vatican based Church official to be indicted for alleged financial crimes.

As per Church law, the pope personally approved the judge’s decision to investigate and indict Becciu. The charges against him include embezzlement and abuse of office. An Italian woman who worked for Becciu was charged with embezzlement.

Italian brokers Gianluigi Torzi and Raffaele Mincione were indicted on charges of embezzlement, fraud and money laundering. Torzi, for whom Italian magistrates issued an arrest warrant in April, was also charged with extortion.

Both have denied wrongdoing.

Four companies associated with individual defendants, two in Switzerland, one in the United States and one in Slovenia, were also indicted.

The trial is due to start on July 27 in the Vatican, a statement said.

Source: REUTERS

When Catholic bishops in the US voted last week to go forward with a measure that could limit the right of some politicians to receive the Eucharist, or Communion, the move highlighted both the continuing politicisation of religion in America and a widening divide within the Catholic Church at large.

Defying the Vatican, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voted overwhelmingly last Friday to draft a formal statement on “the meaning of the Eucharist in the life of the Church”, a measure widely seen as aimed at denying Communion to President Joe Biden because of his support of abortion rights.

The move highlighted the continuing culture wars in the United States, which have increasingly involved the Catholic Church. “There has been a cross-contamination between the political world and the spiritual world,” said Claire Giangravè, Vatican reporter for Religion News Service.

Much of the Catholic leadership are single-issue voters on abortion and are therefore closely aligned with the Republican Party. “A significant number of them are so committed to the abortion issue that it takes precedent over everything else,” said Father Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and a senior analyst with Religion News Service.

Many key advisers in Trump’s inner circle were conservative Catholics, including one-time White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and his counsellor Kellyanne Conway, though Trump himself is not Catholic nor does he identify with any specific Protestant denomination.

Biden is an observant Catholic who attends mass regularly, even when he is traveling, as he did during the G7 summit in Cornwall, England. He is the second Catholic president in the US, after John F. Kennedy. His support of pro-choice legislation, though, means that in the eyes of many, Biden is not a “worthy Catholic”, Giangravè said.

That Biden was the impetus behind the USCCB proposal was clear. Archbishop Joseph Naumann, who chairs the conference’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities told the Associated Press in April that Biden needed to be rebuked for his support of abortion rights.

“They’re using Communion as a weapon to force him to come around,” said Reese. “I think that’s inappropriate and so does the Vatican.”

Conservative bishops have been agitating since Biden’s election in November. Shortly after he won the presidency, Archbishop José H. Gomez, the president of the conference, created a working group to address conflicts that could arise between Biden’s policies, which Gomez said “would advance moral evils”, and the teachings of the Church.

An act of rebellion

The measure was passed by a large margin, with 168 US bishops voting in favour, and 55 opposing and six abstentions, highlighting tensions between the Church in the US and the Vatican.

The vote was effectively an act of rebellion against Vatican guidance.

While Pope Francis did not comment specifically on the measure, he had had previously cautioned against the politicisation of the Eucharist. Communion is “not the reward of saint but the bread of sinners”, he preached earlier this month. And last month, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, Secretary-General of the International Theological Commission, wrote a letter to the US bishops cautioning that the vote could sow discord within the US Church.

Observers, though, note that the tension in the Church in the US existed well before the vote was taken. “In the US there is this polarization due to the political events of recent years,” said Giuseppe Rusconi, a longtime Vatican correspondent and author of the Rossoporpora blog about the Church.

That divide has grown since the ascension of Pope Francis, who has a more progressive agenda than his two predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and who has spotlighted the church’s responsibility to the poor and environmental stewardship. The bishops and cardinals he has appointed tend to favor his agenda. That hasn’t always played well with the old-timers.

“They’re fighting a rear-guard action against Francis in the hopes that he will soon die and be replaced by someone more like John Paul II or Benedict,” Reese said.

At the core, the two sides agree that Catholic politicians should not support abortion rights. “It’s not a theological difference between the Vatican and US bishops, it’s a question of method,” Giangravè said. “The Vatican needs to think on a global scale, so they have to keep in mind that Catholic teaching believes that abortion is a sin, and how do you find a way to talk and negotiate with politicians who support this?”

Much ado about nothing?

Ultimately, the vote is unlikely to have any lasting effect. Under Church law, in order to be adopted, the measure would need to garner unanimous backing from bishops in the US or have the support of two-thirds of them and Vatican approval, which is extremely unlikely to be granted.

“It’s not going to get to that point,” a senior Vatican official told the New York Times. “It’s inconceivable.”

Even if passed, the guidance would not be binding. Only the local bishop can decide to withhold Communion from a parishioner. Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, has made it clear that he would not deny President Biden Communion.

“It’s almost more a media campaign than anything else because legally the bishops conference cannot have a national policy,” Reese said.

When asked about the vote, Biden said that it was “a private matter and I don’t think that’s going to happen”.

The text of the guidance on Communion has not yet been written, but according to the proposal, “the statement will be addressed to all Catholics” and would “include the theological foundation for the Church’s discipline concerning the reception of Holy Communion and a special call for those Catholics who are cultural, political, or parochial leaders to witness the faith”.

Whether the move was borne more of political or of doctrinal concerns will be clearer when the draft is presented.

“It will be interesting to see how this document emerges,” Giangravè said. “Will they get stuck on abortion, or will they educate? That will be the litmus test to see if they are influenced by politics…or if their aim is to instruct.”

The bishops are expected to vote on it at their next meeting in November.

Source: France 24

President Joe Biden’s attendance at early morning Mass with Pope Francis has been nixed from an early plan of the June 15 meeting of both leaders, a reliable Vatican source told CNA.

President Biden, who is in Europe for several high level meetings, had taken the morning of June 15 off to meet Pope Francis as President of the United States for the first time. The President’s entourage had originally requested for Biden to attend Mass with the Pope early in the morning, but the proposal was nixed by the Vatican after considering the impact that President Biden receiving Holy Communion from the Pope would have on the discussions the USCCB is planning to have during their meeting starting Wednesday, June 16. The U.S. bishops are slated to vote on creating a committee that would draft a document about Eucharistic coherence.

President Biden is traveling from Brussels, where he attended the G7 meeting, and will immediately fly to Geneva for his scheduled summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 16.

Then-U.S. Vice President Biden met Pope Francis for the first time in September 2015, when the Pontiff visited the United States to attend the World meeting of Families in Philadelphia.

The following year, on April 29, 2016, Biden went to the Vatican for a summit on regenerative medicine, where he praised Pope Francis and advocated for a global push to cure cancer.

Biden opened his speech at the Vatican by recalling how, while visiting the United States the previous September, Pope Francis had comforted him after the loss of his eldest son Beau, who passed away the previous summer at the age of 46 from brain cancer.

Source: National Catholic Register

Muslims around the world are marking the holy month of Ramadan. It’s the second time they observe the fasting month amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Ramadan crescent moon has been sighted in some nations. This means the fasting month can begin.

During the holy month, Muslims abstain from eating and drinking from dawn to dusk as a means to practice self restraint.

In many countries around the globe, Muslim restaurants close during the day and instead work longer hours overnight. This is especially the case for confectioneries, where they add special sweets to their shelves every year in Ramadan.

This is the second year in a row that Muslims observe the fasting month amid the coronavirus pandemic.

With whole world now under a partial lockdown, religious authorities have ordered that all mass religious ceremonies be either cancelled or held in open air environments, with social distancing.

Ramadan has always been a chance to take part in charity works, and now that the pandemic has unemployed many people, Muslims feel bound to rush for help.

Ramadan is the ninth month of the lunar calendar, where months begin and end depending on the movement of the moon in its orbit around the Earth, and the start of each month depends on the sighting of the new moon the day before.

Some Muslim nations such as Lebanon and Iraq started the fasting month a day ahead of Iran.

To Muslims, Ramadan is more than just a time to abstain from eating and drinking, they find it an opportunity to purify the soul from materialistic desires and polish it with spirituality.

This year, they use the occasion as a chance to ask God to make it the last Ramadan that is marked with the coronavirus.

Source: Presstv with additional editing from Camcordnews

Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai, Light of Reason, Light of Faith: Joseph Ratzinger and the German Enlightenment (Indiana: ST. Augustine’s Press, 2021). 403 pp. $45, ISBN 9781587314667.

In all epochs of the Church’s life, Christian apologists and intellectuals have consistently responded to challenges and questions posed to the faith of the Church.  In the early Church, the teachings of Gnostics and heretics such as Marcion, Celsus, and Donatus Magnus were countered by authentic orthodox Christian apologies by Tertullian, Origen, and Augustine of Hippo, inter alia. The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, triggered by Martin Luther’s “95 Theses” against the Catholic Church on October 31, 1517, caused great turmoil in the Church and beyond. By placing the Holy Bible and Aquinas’ Summa Theologica on an altar in Trent (1545-1563), the Council Fathers offered a systematic response to the theological innovations championed by Luther and other high-voltage reformers. In the Counter-Reformation Church, the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and the Dominicans intellectually engaged the propositions of the reformers. It was therefore only right for one of the most articulate teachers of the faith in the person of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI to consistently engage the Enlightenment, especially the German Enlightenment, whose legacy is only becoming more disturbing, especially in the contemporary Western world.

Fr. Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai’s master class, Light of Reason, Light of Faith: Joseph Ratzinger and the German Enlightenment, offers a critically fascinating account of Ratzinger’s engagement with the German strand of the Enlightenment – the Aufklärung. “Reason” was the prime currency of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment movement that swept across Europe. That is why its motto was “dare to use your reason” (Sapare Aude). As a result, Enlightenment figures such as René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, Georg Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Friedrich Nietzsche callously attempted to explain the faith of the Church from a purely rationalistic way. They attacked the revealed faith of the Church and proposed a speculative rational faith. Revealed faith was seen as a hindrance to human freedom, especially considering that liberté was one of the slogans of the French Revolution. Fr. Maurice cogently examines the thoughts of the leading Enlightenment figures vis-à-vis Ratzinger’s responses over more than four decades to some of their claims. Some of the propositions enunciated by the Enlightenment are still of grave concern to the Church today. For instance, Immanuel Kant places God in the realm of the noumena because, according to him, God’s existence cannot be justified based on reason. Kant rejects the possibility of the existence of God under the notion that God is not accessible to human beings. Since the noumena cannot be accessed through theoretical reason, Kant rejects the demonstration of God’s existence by speculative or theoretical reasoning. Through his Categorical Imperatives, Kant sees a pathway through which humankind can act and subsist morally in a way that neither God nor religion is required (p.334).

Friedrich Nietzsche postulated the “death of God.” According to Hegel, the enlightenment motto “dare to use your reason” meant use your reason to arrive at the consciousness of God inside the human person. For Hegel, God emerges when the self is no longer antithetical to/with the Other. Hegel calls this process absolute knowing. This absolute knowing or absolute idea is God (p.193). God is not extrinsic to the human being. Such philosophical speculations about God and the faith of the Church are of urgent concern to Joseph Ratzinger. This is why Fr. Maurice writes, “To Ratzinger, the Aufklärung marked an enduring criticism of revealed faith, a critique that the Church must continue to engage and respond to, for it touched on the fundamental relationship between faith and reason, between the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the God of the philosophers” (p.1). Being one of the most theologically and philosophically savvy popes in the history of the Church, Ratzinger understands fully well the enduring legacy of the Aufklärung in the Western world today. The atheism, secularism, indifference, and hostility toward Christianity in large sectors of the Western world today definitely trace their origins to the Enlightenment movement of the eighteenth century. The author acknowledges this fact when he writes: “To Benedict, therefore, the criticisms meted against Christianity by the Aufklärung are not dated, but continue to be relevant, especially given the pervasive influence of the Aufklärung in the post-Aufklärung culture, as seen in the anonymous Kantians, Hegelians, Feuerbachians, and Nietzscheans, even in the pews” (p.2). It is partly due to the Aufklärung that football stadia such as the Emirates Stadium, Santiago Bernabéu, Allianz Arena, Anfield, and Old Trafford are now the new religious basilicas in the West. Therefore, engaging the Enlightenment and her offshoots is an urgent pastoral necessity for Joseph Ratzinger. This is why in her book blurb, the distinguished law professor and diplomat Mary Ann Glendon points out that, “No pope has ever spoken so frequently or fulsomely of the legacy of the Enlightenment as has Pope Benedict XVI.”

Being a considerate person, Joseph Ratzinger repeatedly stressed and highlighted the positives of the Enlightenment thought. Fr. Maurice writes, “Ratzinger is not interested in rolling back the objectively good gains of the Aufklärung, such as the value of human rationality in moral discernment” (p.4). However, the overarching aim of Ratzinger’s dialogue with the Enlightenment is to reconcile the God of the philosophers and the God of faith (p.91). It is to harness and use the Aufklärung in explicating the faith of the Church. In A Turning Point for Europe? (1991), Joseph Ratzinger succinctly explained the raison d’être for his sustained engagement with the Aufklärung, “One must not only recognize the positive elements of the Aufklärung and contemporary culture, but must continue to bring the insights of faith, revealed faith, to bear on the present order to open the path to the future” (p.23). Unlike Tertullian, Ratzinger cherished a dance between Athens and Jerusalem/faith and reason.

Fr. Maurice’s book is a veritable contribution to understanding the theology of Joseph Ratzinger and the Enlightenment movement. The work truly fills some regrettable gaps in the study of the theology of Ratzinger. In the Foreword to the book, Emery de Gaál asserts, “preoccupation with Aufklärung is an underlying, constantly recurring sostenuto and leitmotif in Ratzinger’s thinking” (x). However, he rightly points out that the term is not treated by secondary literature on Ratzinger and it is not even listed as an entry in the anthology of important terms in Ratzinger’s theology Ratzinger/Benedikt XVI, Kleines ABC des Glaubens. Light of Reason, Light of Faith fills this lacuna (x-xi).

Light of Reason, Light of Faith is a well-researched, picturesque, written book. It is a book written by someone who genuinely and passionately loves his subject matter. The author is thoroughly immersed in the profound encounter between a living “Doctor of the Church” and the Aufklärung and its offshoots. It is a culmination of over two decades of research, scholarship, and reflection on the path of the author. The author first mentioned his love and admiration of the theology Joseph Ratzinger to me in the streets of Jinja, Uganda in 2004, “Giovanni, I really love Ratzinger’s theology of creation”. Our discussion of this subject matter continued in Nairobi, Kenya (2006-2009) and in Boston (2018-). Being an academic myself, I have not come across a personal library with the amount of resources in Ratzingerian theology and Enlightenment figures like that of the author. As a result, the amount of secondary literature used in the book is impressive. As the renowned Professor Peter Kreeft mentions in his book blurb, “Like Ratzinger himself, Father Agbaw-Ebai’s writing is dense and deep but well worth the effort required to engage it.”

By John Tanyi (Church Historian)

The Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday clarified that the Catholic Church does not have the power to give liturgical blessings of homosexual unions.

Answering the question “does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?,” the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded, “negative.”

In an accompanying note, the doctrine office explained that blessings are sacramentals, and “consequently, in order to conform with the nature of sacramentals, when a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord.”

“Therefore, only those realities which are in themselves ordered to serve those ends are congruent with the essence of the blessing imparted by the Church,” the CDF said.

“For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”

The ruling and note were approved for publication by Pope Francis and signed by CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria and secretary Archbishop Giacomo Morandi.

The CDF’s note did not state the origin of the dubium submitted to the doctrinal office, but noted that “in some ecclesial contexts, plans and proposals for blessings of unions of persons of the same sex are being advanced.”

In recent years, German bishops in particular have been increasingly outspoken in demanding “discussions about an opening” towards acceptance of practiced homosexuality and the blessing of homosexual unions in the Church.

Following consultations in Berlin in late 2019, the chairman of the marriage and family commission of the German bishops’ conference declared that the German bishops agreed that homosexuality was a “normal form” of human sexual identity.

The topic also plays a central role in one of four forums that constitute the controversial “Synodal Process” underway in Germany.

The CDF explained in 2003 that “the Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”

German bishops who have publicly voiced support for the blessing of same-sex unions in the Catholic Church include Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, and Bishop Heinrich Timmerervers of Dresden-Meißen.

Bishop Bätzing, the president of the German bishops’ conference, in December 2020 called for changes to the section on homosexuality in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Expressing openness to blessings of homosexual unions, he said, “we need solutions for this.”

On Feb. 23, Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz defended his support for a book of blessings and rites for homosexual unions. The book followed a May 2020 publication from Austria about how same-sex couples might receive a formal, liturgical blessing. Kohlgraf suggested that Catholics with homosexual inclinations cannot all be expected to live chastely.

The call for liturgical blessings of same-sex unions is part of a wider push by some German bishops to change the Church’s teaching on a number of issues, including on the sacraments of priestly ordination and marriage.

CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German partner agency, reported that Bishop Bätzing has suggested that the Vatican Synod of Bishops on synodality, scheduled for October 2022, could help implement German “Synodal Way” resolutions not only in Germany, but throughout the Catholic Church.

Source: National Catholic Register

Cardinal Robert Sarah on Wednesday rejected claims that he and Pope Francis are enemies, in his first interview since stepping down from his Vatican post.

In an interview with an Italian newspaper published March 10, the Guinean cardinal said that he had “tried to be a loyal, obedient, and humble servant of the truth of the Gospel.”

“Even though some journalists continually repeat the same nonsense,” he told Il Foglio, “I have never opposed the pope.”

An English translation of the cardinal’s interview was published on Wednesday by the National Catholic Register.

On Feb. 20, Pope Francis accepted Cardinal Sarah’s resignation as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Sarah had submitted his resignation to the pope when he turned 75 in June 2020, as Church norms dictate.

Before his resignation, Sarah was the most senior African prelate at the Vatican, appointed head of the liturgy department by Pope Francis in November 2014.

Sarah said in his interview that when Pope Francis told him that he had decided to accept the resignation, “I immediately replied that I was happy and grateful for his decision.”

“I am happy and proud to have served three popes — St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis — in the Roman Curia for more than 20 years,” the cardinal continued.

“Some people insinuate without reason or even being able to provide concrete and credible proof that we were enemies, it’s not true! Pope Francis likes frankness. We have always worked together with simplicity, despite the fantasies of journalists,” he said.

Sarah criticized the idea that his former role leading the Congregation for Divine Worship was “an honorary position, but of little importance.”

“I believe that the responsibility for the liturgy puts us at the heart of the Church, of her raison d’être. The Church is neither an administration nor a human institution. The Church mysteriously prolongs Christ’s presence on earth,” he said.

Sarah quoted the Second Vatican Council document Sacrosanctum concilium, which says that the liturgy is “a sacred action surpassing all others” and “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows.”

“The Church exists to give men to God and to give God to men,” Sarah explained. “This is precisely the role of the liturgy: to worship God and to communicate divine grace to souls. When the liturgy is sick, the whole Church is in danger because her relationship with God is not only weakened but deeply damaged.”

He recalled Benedict XVI’s comment that the crisis of the Church is “essentially a crisis of the liturgy because it is a crisis of the relationship with God.”

“If God is not at the center of the Church’s life, then she is in danger of death,” the cardinal said.

Sarah also emphasized that the liturgy is about God, not the community or individual. This reality, he said, is expressed well when the liturgy is said ad orientem, meaning with the priest facing the altar, or liturgical East, rather than the people.

The cardinal also explained why he thought that silence was important in the liturgy.

“When man remains silent, he leaves a place for God,” he said. “On the contrary, when the liturgy becomes chatty, it forgets that the cross is its center, it organizes itself around the microphone.”

He said these questions are crucial, “because they determine the place we give to God,” and lamented that they had become “ideological.”

Factional struggles within the Church are a source of suffering for him, he said. “Too often we act as if everything is a question of politics, power, influence and the unjustified imposition of a hermeneutic of Vatican II that totally breaks and is irreversibly at odds with Tradition.”

He declared it “false” that he was opposed to the Second Vatican Council because he spoke of a sense of the sacred in the liturgy.

“I don’t believe that the struggle between progressives and conservatives has any meaning in the Church. These categories are political and ideological,” he said, adding that “the Church is not a field of political struggle.”

“The only thing that counts is to seek God ever more deeply, to meet him there and humbly kneel down to adore him.”

It was unfortunate, Cardinal Sarah said, that there are “ideologues” who set the pre-Council Church against the post-Council Church.

According to the cardinal, these people “are dividers; they are doing the work of the devil.”

“The Church is one, without rupture, without changing course, because her Founder ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,’” he said. “She goes towards God, she directs us towards him. From the profession of faith of St. Peter to Pope Francis through Vatican II, the Church turns us towards Christ.”

Now that he is retired, Sarah said that he intended to continue working and was happy to have more time to pray and read.

“I will continue to write, to speak, to travel. Here in Rome, I continue to receive priests and faithful from all over the world,” he said.

Sarah will continue to serve as a member of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, where he said he saw “with immense joy how the Church is bursting with holiness.”

“More than ever the Church needs bishops who speak clearly, free and faithful to Jesus Christ and to the doctrinal and moral teachings of his Gospel,” he said. “I intend to continue this mission and even amplify it.”

Source: Catholic News Agency

Pope Francis prayed on Sunday for “victims of war” outside a centuries-old church in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, heavily damaged by the Islamic State group.

The 84-year-old, travelling under tight security, led a prayer service for the victims of the war in Mosul, an ancient crossroads whose centre was reduced to rubble by fierce fighting to oust the Islamic State (IS) group.

Francis said that the exodus of Christians from Iraq and the broader Middle East “does incalculable harm not just to the individuals and communities concerned, but also to the society they leave behind”.

The visit to Mosul follows an interfaith rally on Saturday where the pope reinforced his message of inter-religious tolerance and fraternity during the first-ever papal visit to Iraq, a country riven by religious and ethnic divisions.

“We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion,” Francis said as he urged Iraq’s Muslim and Christian religious leaders to put aside animosities and work together for peace and unity.

Pope Francis’ trip to Iraq as a “pilgrim of peace” aims to reassure the country’s ancient, but dwindling, Christian community and to expand his dialogue with other religions.

The leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics on Saturday met Iraq’s top Shiite Muslim cleric, the reclusive Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who agreed that Iraq’s Christians should be able to live in “peace”.

“We all hope that this visit will be a good omen for the Iraqi people,” Adnane Youssef, a Christian from northern Iraq, told AFP. “We hope that it will lead to better days.”

The Christian community of Iraq, a Muslim-majority country of 40 million, has shrunk from 1.5 million before the 2003 US-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein to only 400,000 now, about one percent of the population.

“This very important visit will boost our morale after years of difficulties, problems and wars,” said an Iraqi Christian leader, Father George Jahoula.

Rebuilding efforts

Back in 2014, when IS militants swept across one third of Iraq, Pope Francis had said he was ready to come to meet the displaced and other victims of war.

Seven years later, after a stop early Sunday in the Kurdish north of Iraq, he got to see for himself the devastated Old City of Mosul and efforts to rebuild it.

Pope Francis will also visit Qaraqosh, further east in the Nineveh Plain, which is one of Iraq’s oldest Christian towns.

It was largely destroyed in 2014 when IS rampaged through the area, but its residents have trickled back since 2017 and slowly worked at rebuilding their hometown.

To honour the pope, local artisans have woven a two-metre (6.5-foot) prayer shawl, or stole, with the “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” prayers carefully hand-stitched in golden thread in Syriac, a dialect of the language spoken by Jesus Christ, which is still used in Qaraqosh.

Pope Francis’s Iraq schedule

The pope’s programme in Iraq includes visits to the cities of Baghdad, Najaf, Ur, Mosul, Qaraqosh and Erbil. He will traverse some 1,445 kms in a country where tensions still linger and where more recently the scourge of Covid-19 has led to record numbers of infections.

Pope Francis will travel in an armoured car through the customary crowds that flock to catch a glimpse of the leader of the Catholic Church. At times he will be required to travel either by helicopter or plane over areas where jihadists belonging to the Islamic State group are still present.

Proceedings kicked off Friday with a speech to Iraqi leaders in Baghdad, addressing the security and economic difficulties confronting Iraq’s 40 million people. The pope also discusses the persecution of the country’s Christian minority.

On Saturday he was hosted in the holy city of Najaf by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highest authority for many Shiites in Iraq and the world.

The pope also made a trip to the ancient city of Ur, which according to the Bible is the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, a figure common to the three monotheistic religions. There he prayed with Muslims, Yazidis and Sanaeans (a pre-Christian monotheist religion).

Francis will continue his journey on Sunday in the province of Nineveh in northern Iraq, the cradle of Iraqi Christians. He will then head to Mosul and Qaraqoch, two cities marked by the destruction of Islamic extremists.

The pontiff will conclude his tour by presiding over an open-air mass on Sunday in the presence of thousands of Christians in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. This Kurdish Muslim stronghold has offered refuge to hundreds of thousands of Christians, Yazidis and Muslims who fled the atrocities of the Islamic State group.

Holy mass in stadium

Security will be extra-tight in the north of Iraq, where state forces are still hunting IS remnants and sleeper cells.

Many thousands of troops and police have been deployed as the pope has criss-crossed the country, taking planes, helicopters and armoured convoys to cover more than 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) in-country.

The other major challenge is the Covid-19 pandemic, as Iraq has recently been in the grip of a second wave, with a record of more than 5,000 cases in a day.

Iraqi authorities have imposed lockdown measures to control crowds, but thousands of faithful were expected to flock to a stadium later Sunday in the northern city of Arbil to hear the pope.

Arbil, the capital of Iraq’s oil-rich northern Kurdish region, has been a relative haven of stability and a place of refuge for many Christians who fled IS.

Several thousand seats in the Franso Hariri stadium will be left empty to avoid creating a super-spreader event when Iraqis come to hear the Catholic leader, known here as “Baba al-Vatican”, deliver the holy mass.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Pope Francis landed in Iraq Friday to begin his historic trip to the war-battered country, defying security fears and the pandemic to comfort one of the world’s oldest and most persecuted Christian communities.

The pope, who wore a mask during the flight, kept it on as he descended the stairs to the tarmac and was greeted by two masked children in traditional dress.

A red carpet was rolled out on the tarmac at Baghdad’s international airport with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on hand to greet him.

The 84-year-old, who said he is making his first-ever papal visit to Iraq as a “pilgrim of peace,” will also reach out to Shiite Muslims when he meets Iraq’s top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

The four-day journey is the pope’s first abroad since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which left the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics saying he felt “caged” inside the Vatican.

While Francis has been vaccinated, Iraq has been gripped by a second wave with a record of over 5,000 new cases a day, prompting authorities to impose full lockdowns during the pontiff’s visit.

Security was tight in Iraq, a country that is still hunting for Islamic State (IS) group sleeper cells after years of war and insurgency. Only days ago, a barrage of rockets ploughed into a military base hosting US troops.

Hundreds of people had gathered along the airport road with hopes of catching a glimpse of the pope’s plane touching down.

Iraqis were keen to welcome him and the global attention his visit will bring, with banners and posters hanging high in central Baghdad, and billboards depicting Francis with the slogan “We are all Brothers” decorating the main thoroughfare.

Services in ravaged churches, refurbished stadiums

Francis will preside over a half-dozen services in ravaged churches, refurbished stadiums and remote desert locations, where attendance will be limited to allow for social distancing.

Inside the country, he will travel more than 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) by plane and helicopter, flying over areas where security forces are still battling IS remnants.

For shorter trips, Francis will take an armoured car on freshly paved roads that will be lined with flowers and posters welcoming the leader known here as “Baba Al-Vatican”.

The pope’s visit has deeply touched Iraq’s Christians, whose numbers have collapsed over years of persecution and sectarian violence, from 1.5 million in 2003 to fewer than 400,000 today.

“We’re hoping the pope will explain to the government that it needs to help its people,” a Christian from Iraq’s north, Saad al-Rassam, told AFP. “We have suffered so much, we need the support.”

‘Too many martyrs’

The first day of the pope’s ambitious itinerary will see him meet government officials and clerics in the capital Baghdad, including at the Our Lady of Salvation church, where a jihadist attack left dozens dead in 2010.

He will also visit the northern province of Nineveh, where in 2014 IS jihadists forced minorities to either flee, convert to Islam or be put to death.

“People had only a few minutes to decide if they wanted to leave or be decapitated,” recalled Karam Qacha, a Chaldean Catholic priest in Nineveh.

“We left everything — except our faith.”

Some 100,000 Christians — around half of those who lived in the province — fled, of whom just 36,000 have returned, according to Catholic charity “Aid to the Church in Need”.

Among the returnees, a third have said they want to leave again in coming years, dismayed by Iraq’s rampant corruption, persecution and poverty, which now affects 40 percent of the population.

The exodus is a loss for all of Iraq, said Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, who heads the Vatican’s Congregation for the Oriental Churches and will accompany the pope to Iraq.

“A Middle East without Christians is like trying to make bread with flour, but no yeast or salt,” he said.

The visit aims not only to encourage Christians to stay in their homeland, but even prompt some emigres to return from nearby Lebanon and Jordan, or further afield like Canada and Australia.

In a video address ahead of the trip, Francis evoked “the wounds of loved ones left behind and homes abandoned,” saying there had been “too many martyrs” in Iraq.

“I come as a pilgrim, a penitent pilgrim to implore forgiveness and reconciliation from the Lord after years of war and terrorism.”

‘Minarets and church bells’

The pope has insisted on the visit despite resurging violence.

Rocket attacks across the country have left three people dead in recent weeks, including a US contractor who died Wednesday.

Francis’ determination to travel to areas long shunned by foreign dignitaries has impressed many in Iraq — as has his planned meeting with Sistani, 90, the top authority for Iraq’s Shiites.

A highly reclusive figure who rarely accepts visitors, Sistani will make an exception to host Francis at his humble home in the shrine city of Najaf on Saturday.

Banners all over Najaf have celebrated “the historic encounter, between the minarets and the church bells”.

Francis, a major supporter of inter-religious dialogue, will afterwards head to the desert site of Ur, where Abraham is thought to have been born.

There, he will host an interfaith service that will bring together not only the Abrahamic religions but also include followers of other beliefs, including Yazidis and Sabeans.

The Pope’s programme in Iraq includes visits to the cities of Baghdad, Najaf, Ur, Mosul, Qaraqosh and Erbil. He will traverse some 1,445 km in a country where Iraqi-American tensions still linger and where more recently the scourge of Covid-19 has led to record numbers of infections.

Pope Francis will travel in an armoured car to avoid the customary crowds that flock to catch a glimpse of the leader of the Catholic Church. At times he will be required to travel either by helicopter or plane over areas where jihadists belonging to the Islamic State group are still present.

Proceedings kick off Friday with a speech to Iraqi leaders in Baghdad, addressing the security and economic difficulties confronting Iraq’s 40 million people. The pope is also expected to mention the persecution of the country’s Christian minority.

On Saturday he will visit the holy city of Najaf, where he will be hosted by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the highest authority for many Shiites in Iraq and the world.

The pope will make a trip to the ancient city of Ur, the birthplace, according to the Bible, of the prophet Abraham, a figure common to the three monotheistic religions. There he will pray with Muslims, Yazidis and Sanaeans (pre-Christian monotheisms).

Francis will continue his journey on Sunday in the province of Nineveh (northern Iraq), the cradle of Iraqi Christians. He will then head to Mosul and Qaraqoch, two cities marked by the destruction of the Islamic extremists.

The pontiff will conclude his tour by presiding over an open-air Mass on Sunday in the presence of thousands of Christians in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. This Kurdish Muslim stronghold has offered refuge to hundreds of thousands of Christians, Yazidis and Muslims who fled the atrocities of the Islamic State group.

(FRANCE 24 with AP and REUTERS)