I am grateful to the Lord for the opportunity to be among you this morning. I have looked forward to this time together. I thank His Beatitude Patriarch Ignace Youssif Younan for his words of welcome, and Mrs Doha Sabah Abdallah and Father Ammar Yako for their testimonies.
Surrounded by the relics of violence, war, and terrorism, Pope Francis Sunday told the Christian community of Iraq that they’re proof in flesh and blood of the victory of life over death.
Mosul, a city in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains that’s both a crossroads of tolerance and a former stronghold of ISIS, did its best Sunday to show Pope Francis its former face, with a pristine red carpet and papal-white chairs that seemed made for the occasion.
Representatives of different religions who attended the inter religious meeting in Ur shared their impressions of the pontiff’s s presence in their country.
Pope Francis told Iraqi Christians that when they suffer discrimination, persecution, or war, the Eight Beatitudes are addressed to them.
Wisdom in these lands has been cultivated since ancient times. Indeed, the search for wisdom has always attracted men and women. Often, however, those with more means can acquire more knowledge and have greater opportunities, while those who have less are sidelined. Such inequality – which has increased in our time – is unacceptable.
As children of Abraham, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together with other believers and all persons of good will, we thank you for having given us Abraham, a distinguished son of this noble and beloved country, to be our common father in faith.
This blessed place brings us back to our origins, to the sources of God’s work, to the birth of our religions. Here, where Abraham our father lived, we seem to have returned home. It was here that Abraham heard God’s call; it was from here that he set out on a journey that would change history.
Surrounded by sand and flanked by a tapestry of religious representatives in the city of Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, Pope Francis called on spiritual leaders to affirm that it’s blasphemy to use the name of God to justify hatred and that extremism is a betrayal of religion.
Pope Francis’s visit to Iraq is historic for many reasons, not least of which is Saturday’s meeting with the chief figure in Shia Islam, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
