Pope Francis is debating Iraqi victims in Islamic State

In Mosul, the pope spoke against a backdrop of ruins in a part of the city where an Islamic State captured a church and used it as a prison. Churches in the area were also destroyed during the battles to get the town back in 2016 and 2017.

“How hard it is for this country to be hit hard, the cradle of civilization, with ancient places of worship destroyed and thousands of people – Muslims, Christians, the Yazidis, who were severely destroyed with terrorism, and others – strongly moved or killed, ”said the pope. “If God is the God of peace – for so it is – it is wrong for us to pay war in his name.”

Islamic State defeated Mosul in 2014 when the opposition group crossed Iraq and Syria and launched a global campaign for terrorist attacks. It was in Mosul that the group’s deputy leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced the establishment of a caliphate, believing the fate of Islamic emperors from history.

Once a city of more than a million people, Mosul was the largest population center captured by the Islamic State, and was at the heart of its ordeal in a rigid religious government. The group blew historic landmarks, exterminated Christians, and committed racism against the Yazidi religious minority, according to the United Nations.

About 500,000 Mosul residents, including more than 120,000 Christians, have fled the rule of the Islamic state, whose record of destruction there includes the tomb of the prophet. Jonah’s Old Testament, thousands of rare books and manuscripts from the federal library and part of the walls of ancient Nineveh.

With the support of U.S. air power and the coalition, Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul in 2017 after a nine-month battle that led to some of the most intense civil war since World War II. The battle left the town in ruins.

Visiting Mosul, Pope Francis called attention to the situation of a city that is still struggling to rebuild and where many residents feel neglected by the central government there. in Baghdad. Years after the city was liberated, the reconstruction effort has been hampered by disorganization and lack of resources.

The pope recognized Muslims who helped resettle their Christian neighbors in Mosul, who said that “the true identity of this city is homosexual coexistence between people from different backgrounds. and cultures. “

After the ceremony, the pope inspected old churches and stopped praying in silence in front of one of them.

The pope visited a Catholic cathedral in Qaraqosh on the field of Nineveh, the traditional center of Christianity in Iraq. The cathedral, used by Islamic State forces as a firing range, is still being rebuilt. Since the defeat of the Islamic State in 2017, Iranian-backed militias and Kurdish security forces have prevented Christians and other ethnic minorities from resetting in the region. According to the Vatican, less than half of Qaraqosh’s population by 2014 has returned to the city.

Iraq’s Christian population has declined from an estimated 1.4 million before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion reached 250,000 or less today. Many have emigrated to the USA or other Western countries. At the cathedral of Qaraqosh, Pope Francis appealed to them not to abandon the land of their ancestors.

“Now is the time to rebuild and start anew, to rely on the grace of God, who will guide the destinations of all individuals and peoples,” the pope said.

Later on Sunday, a mass was to be held in Erbil in the country’s autonomous northern region of Kurdistan, where more than a million Iraqis evacuated from other parts of Iraq are still stay years after the issue of Islamic State. Tens of thousands of them are Christians, mostly living in Erbil.

—The Sadirq in Erbil did not contribute to this article.

Write to Francis X. Rocca at [email protected] and Jared Malsin at [email protected]