Dear Brothers and Sisters, I embrace all of you with a father’s affection. I am grateful to the Lord who in his providence has made it possible for us to meet today. I thank His Beatitude Patriarch Ignace Youssif Younan and His Beatitude Cardinal Louis Sako for their words of welcome.
Pope Francis is set to become the first pontiff to set a foot in Iraq on March 5, when he lands in Baghdad after a four-hour trip from Rome.
Tomorrow Pope Francis leaves for Iraq, and in most of the Christian world it’ll be seen as a trip to honor the memory of a martyred Christian population that suffered unimaginable horrors under an ISIS occupation of the Nineveh Plains region of the country between 2014 and 2017.
The 1,200 Chaldean Catholic families who live in Arizona are thousands of miles from the land of their birth. On March 5, their hearts will turn toward their native Iraq.
On the same day that 10 rockets hit an air base in Iraq, Pope Francis said he had to travel to the country because he could not disappoint them.
Pope Francis traveled to Iraq on a first-ever pontiff visit to the birthplace of the biblical figure of Abraham. The Pope’s mission during the three day visit is three-fold: encouraging the Christian community, long- time victim of persecution and extremism; pursuing dialogue with Shia Islam; and encountering the Iraqi nation as a whole.
When it seemed there was nothing “unprecedented” left for Pope Francis to accomplish, on March 5 he will embark in another historic first: A papal visit to Iraq, the birthplace of the biblical figure of Abraham.
Slovenian Archbishop Mitja Leskovar, the papal ambassador in Iraq, who was supposed to accompany Pope Francis during his March 5-8 visit to the land of the two rivers, tested positive for COVID-19 on Feb. 27 and is now in isolation
Sister Dianna Ortiz struggled daily with memories of torture and rape at the hands of Guatemala security forces in 1989, but she would not let that define her life.
Father Naim Shoshandy has plenty of reasons to be angry: On March 23, 2014, the terrorist organization known as Islamic State murdered his 27-year-old brother, for no other reason other than the fact that he was a Christian.
