Pope Francis plans historic visit to Iraq over two-decade conflict

Pope Francis will make a historic visit to Iraq in March, the Vatican said Monday, the first ever by a pontiff and which will include a trip to Mosul.

The 83-year-old pope has long spoken of his desire to visit the Middle Eastern country, where two decades of conflict has taken a heavy toll on Christian communities.

Between March 5 and 8 next year, Francis will "visit Baghdad, the plain of Ur... the city of Erbil, as well as Mosul and Qaraqosh in the plain of Nineveh," spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement.

The visit to Mosul -- the first by a senior international figure for half a decade -- will be particularly significant, as the ancient northern city was once a stronghold of the Islamic State group.

Iraq's historic and diverse Christian communities have been devastated by the sectarian warfare that followed the 2003 US-led invasion and the IS sweep through a third of the country in 2014.

Communities of Assyrians, Armenians, Chaldeans, Protestants and more have all been directly targeted, while many more have fled.

William Warda, co-founder of the Hammurabi Human Rights Organisation, estimates there are now just 400,000 Christians in Iraq, down from 1.5 million in 2003.

The trip will be the pope's first visit abroad since the coronavirus outbreak hit Italy, and the Vatican said the programme would "take into consideration the evolution of the worldwide health emergency".

Francis said last year that Iraq was on his list for 2020, but was forced to cancel all foreign trips in June.

At the time, he said he hoped Iraq could "face the future through the peaceful and shared pursuit of the common good on the part of all elements of society, including the religious, and not fall back into hostilities sparked by the simmering conflicts of the regional powers."

Iraqi President Barham Saleh invited the pope in July 2019, saying he hoped a visit would help the country "heal" after years of strife.

The foreign ministry on Monday said the trip "symbolises a message of peace to Iraq and the whole region".

Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, the patriarch of Iraq's Chaldean Catholic Church, said the pope would "bring us his support and also a word of hope".

He told Vatican News that Christians in the Middle East were "marginalised, even sometimes persecuted, therefore we need support and to hear him speak and to encourage us to remain in our land".

But the pope would be bringing a message for all Iraqis, Sako said: "We are all brothers and members of the same family and we are not enemies."

Yohanna Petros Mouche, the Syriac Catholic archbishop of Mosul, said he hoped the visit would encourage Christians to stay in Iraq -- and perhaps persuade those who have left to return.

"It already shows everyone that the country is more stable, that it is capable of receiving the pope," he told the Catholic news agency i.media.

In 1999, the late pope John Paul II, a fierce critic of the US-led war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, wanted to visit the ancient city of Ur of the Chaldees in southern Iraq.

According to the Bible, Ur is where God first prayed to Abraham.

But there were significant concerns about security and the United States and Britain also feared Saddam would seize upon it for propaganda purposes.

Pope Francis has made boosting ties between Christianity and Islam a cornerstone of his papacy.

Last year he visited the United Arab Emirates, hosting a historic public mass for an estimated 170,000 Catholics at a stadium, and Morocco.

The pope had already visited Turkey in 2014, Azerbaijan in 2016 and Egypt in 2017.