After whirlwind historic visit, Pope leaving Iraq for Rome
Pope Francis concluded on Monday his historic lightning tour of Iraq that sought to bring hope to the country’s marginalized Christian minority with a message of coexistence, forgiveness and peace.
The pontiff and his itinerant delegation were to be dismissed with a farewell ceremony at the Baghdad airport, from where he will depart for Rome after a four-day papal visit that has covered five Iraqi provinces.
Throughout, Francis urged Iraqis to embrace diversity, from Najaf in the south, where he held a historic face-to-face meeting with the powerful Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to Nineveh in the north, where he met with Christian. victims of terror from the Islamic State group and listened to their testimonies of survival.
People gathered in crowds to catch a glimpse of the Pope wherever he went, fueling concerns about the coronavirus. Few wore masks, especially during Francis’ stops in northern Iraq on Sunday. That day ended with an open-air mass in a stadium that drew nearly 10,000 people. Security was tight and most events were tightly controlled.
Public health experts had expressed concern ahead of the trip that large gatherings could serve as super-spread events of the coronavirus in a country suffering from a worsening outbreak and where few have been vaccinated. The Pope and members of his delegation have been vaccinated, but most Iraqis have not.
Iraq is in the midst of another wave of the coronavirus, spurred on by a new, more infectious strain that first appeared in the UK. Authorities in Iraq recorded 4,068 new infections on March 6, according to Health Ministry figures, a significant increase in infection rates at the beginning of the year. In all, 13,500 people have died out of a total of 720,000 infections.
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She is a freelance blogger, writer, and speaker, and writes for various entertainment magazines.