In recent days, many people have tried to offer an evaluation of Pope Francis’ trip to Iraq. I think it is difficult, if not impossible, to attempt an exhaustive one. There are too many issues involved, and, most of all, we are too close to this global event made up of so many other details that can only be understood in the course of time. Obviously, some elements, more than others, have captured the imagination of those who followed the various events in a context that, in some ways, in its stark reality, risked appearing surreal.
In fact, looking back at the stereotype of papal journeys, made popular by St. John Paul II from 1979 onwards, we were accustomed to quite different scenarios and backgrounds: oceanic crowds, choreographic preparation that often bordered on perfection, and, above all, events that left the image, especially in the early years of the Polish pope’s era, of strong faith, at the center of history, in contrast to the atheistic world from which the Polish pope came.
Pope Francis, who at the beginning of his pontificate had introduced the idea of another Church, a Church that ‘gets involved in accidents’ like a ‘field hospital.’ In recent years, the pope has been committed to transmitting this image of the Church and has done so practically everywhere he has gone.
From his first official trip to Lampedusa (Italy), the port and cemetery of migrants, to Bangui (Central African Republic), where he opened the door that inaugurated his unexpected and extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, to Mosul (Iraq), where the stage had only rubble and walls still riddled with bullets of various calibers as a backdrop. And we cannot forget Tacloban, a city in eastern Philippines, where he braved an impending typhoon to stand by the survivors of another catastrophic event (Super Typhoon Yolanda, also known as Haiyan); Lesbos (Greece) where he unhurriedly spent precious time listening to the unspeakable stories of refugees from Afghanistan and Syria.
The lesson of Pope Francis is not just about showing that the most precious face of the Church is the one that ‘gets involved in accidents,’ but rather, that is the way the Christian community shows its ‘closeness,’ the warmth that needs to be felt by those who suffer. Above all, he is committed to projecting these communities onto the world stage to say that this is the true Church, which we should all cherish and which bears witness to Christ in an authentic way.
As he said on his return flight, the pope breathes at these junctures, because this is his Petrine call, the one for which the conclave elected him, without knowing and imagining where he would lead Peter’s boat. We are all seeing and experiencing this in recent years. And his journeys are probably the truest reflection of this, leaving no room for misunderstandings.
On the other hand, this is nothing new. Like his predecessors, the Argentine pope has shown that he is able to read and interpret the ‘signs of the times’ and offers credible testimony to the fact that the Church is a witness to the times and addresses its problems and key issues, offering answers that are almost always against the current, compared to those that the political, international and financial world today imposes.
Faced with the reality that Pope Francis found himself living, including the unprecedented one (at least, in these terms) of the pandemic, the essential category of his pontificate, also confirmed in Iraq, is fraternity. The pope’s personal and ecclesial testimony, his Magisterium[1] and his relations, not only but in a special way, with the Muslim world, now make fraternity a geopolitical element. This was also evident in his meeting with the Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani. The implications of those forty-five minutes of encounter are fundamental.
We all know, in fact, that the great knot that Islam must untie today is in its own world: the tension, which has never abated but is now dangerously heightened, between the Sunni and Shiite factions. It is here that the roots of many problems that Muslims experience and for which many also die must be traced. Pope Francis has shown great ‘political’ tact in wanting to meet Al-Sistani, the most significant representative of Shiism, well distanced from the Iranian theocracy that, since the Khomeinist revolution of the 1980s, has pushed the Iranian world to be a champion of this fringe group of the Muslim kaleidoscope. Al-Sistani has always distanced himself from the theocratic choice of the Iranian ayatollahs, and has been an acknowledged spiritual and religious leader for decades. Among other things, he was born in Iran.
The meeting between the two leaders took place behind closed doors, but as Pope Francis described it on the return flight, it was a moment of spirituality, “a universal message. I felt the duty, […] to go and see a great, a wise man, a man of God. And only by listening to him do you perceive this. […] And he is a person who has that wisdom … and also prudence. […] And he was very respectful, very respectful in the meeting, and I felt honored. Even in the greeting: though a person of his stature never gets up, he got up, to greet me, twice. He is a humble and wise man. This meeting had a great positive impact on my soul.”
The pope ventured words of appreciation that perhaps no pope has had the courage to offer in the past: “And these wise men are everywhere, because God’s wisdom has been spread throughout the world. It is the same with the saints, who are not only those on the altars. They are the everyday saints, the ones I call saints ‘next door’– men and women – who live their faith, whatever it may be, with consistency, who live human values with consistency, fraternity with consistency.” All this did not go unnoticed.
Positive comments poured in from many quarters, starting from the Muslim world itself. Sayyed Jawad Mohammed Taqi Al-Khoei, secretary general of the Al-Khoei Institute in Najaf, a prominent member of the Iraqi Shiite world and director of the Al-Khoei Institute (part of the Hawza of Najaf, a religious seminary founded 1,000 years ago for Shiite Muslim scholars), was very clear in his approval:
“Although this is the first meeting in history between the head of the Shia Islamic establishment and the head of the Catholic Church, this visit is the fruit of many years of exchange between Najaf and the Vatican and will undoubtedly strengthen our interreligious relations. It was also a historic moment for Iraq.” Al-Khoei affirmed the commitment to “continue strengthening our relations as institutions and individuals. We will soon travel to the Vatican to ensure that this dialogue continues, develops, and does not stop here. The world faces common challenges, and these challenges cannot be solved by any state, institution, or person alone.”
The AsiaNews agency also reports some of the positive comments that appeared in the Iranian press, which gave wide coverage to and celebrated the historic meeting as an “opportunity for peace.” Such news was the opening headline in the Islamic Republic’s newspapers and media outlets. Sazandegi, a storied newspaper close to the reformist wing, emphasized that the two religious leaders are today “the standard-bearers of world peace.” He called their face-to-face meeting in the home of the Shiite spiritual leader “the most effective event [in the history] of dialogue between religions.”
Roberto Catalano
[1] Teaching authority of the Church
