VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis said he canceled trips during the pandemic because ‘I can not provoke rallies with conscience’, but that the only thing that would prevent him from becoming the first pope to visit war-torn Iraq is a new increase in infections would be.
This is exactly what happened. A sharp increase in coronavirus cases has led Iraqi officials to set up locks. Shiite authorities have suspended religious pilgrimages. The Vatican’s own ambassador contracted the virus on Sunday and went into isolation. To a large extent, suicide bombings, rocket attacks and geopolitical tensions have increased.
But Francis is, to the surprise of many, planning to go anyway. After coughing behind the walls of the Vatican for more than a year, he will fly to Baghdad on Friday at one of the most ominous moments of the entire pandemic, sending a message facing almost all public guidelines health and possibly thousands of Iraqis at risk.
“The day after tomorrow, according to God’s will, I will go to Iraq for a three-day pilgrimage,” Francis said in his weekly speech to the believers on Wednesday, just hours after a new barrage of rocket attacks. ‘I ask that you accompany this apostolic journey with prayer, so that it may take place in the best way and bear the expected fruit. The Iraqi people are waiting for us. ”
Francis himself was vaccinated in mid-January, and although he was criticized for refusing to wear masks in private audiences, he called on wealthy countries to give vaccines to the poor, and a refusal to vaccinate suicide. give’.
The pope’s success is also being vaccinated, but there are concerns among the pope’s supporters that a trip largely designed to bring peace and encouragement to the long-suffering Christians in Iraq could have the potential to be a spreader. The possibility and possible disaster of the 84-year-old pope who accidentally endangers an Iraqi population with virtually no access to vaccines does not lose its allies in Rome.
“There is concern that the pope’s visit is not endangering the health of the people, it is clear,” said Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit priest and closest ally of Francis. “There is an awareness of the problem.”
Even Francis’ predecessor, Benedict XVI, expressed concern about the trip in an interview with Corriere della Sera, an Italian newspaper, which called the trip important but ‘dangerous’.
The Vatican insists that the March 5-8 trip will be a safe, socially distant and sober visit without the usual fanfare and celebrations. Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni on Tuesday underestimated the number of cases in Iraq when he addressed reporters who asked how the pope could possibly justify not postponing a trip that could endanger so much. He also stressed the relatively young age of many Iraqis, saying the pope would travel in a closed car so as not to attract crowds.
“No more than a few hundred people, at a distance,” would gather to see him to limit the risks, he said.
But Francis is planning a big mass with thousands of people in a football stadium in the Kurdish city of Erbil, and will probably attract crowds to see him pray in Qaraqosh, a city of Syrian Catholics, north of the Nineveh plain.
“There will be a lot of people,” said Rev. Karam Qasha, a Catholic priest in northern Iraq, said days before the trip when he registered the participants for the mass in Erbil. “Every day someone calls me and asks me, ‘Father, it’s my dream to see the pope, too.’ Can you bring me in among those who go? ‘
While Father Qasha said that cases of coronavirus seem to be climbing exponentially, he was not worried about rules for social distance, and because many people have already contracted and cured the virus.
He said he had recovered from the virus, and that his congregation members who were “all praying together” had caused a miracle in the crowded churches. “The virus has almost disappeared from my city,” he said.
Cardinal Louis Raphael I Sako, the patriarch of the Iraqi Catholic Church, said in an interview that there is no danger to him and also to people, because it is about the great masses and the diplomatic meetings of Francis: mask wear measures would be observed. “I do not think there is a risk to anyone.”
Andrea Vicini, a medical doctor, Jesuit priest and professor of moral theology and bioethics at Boston College, admires the pope’s willingness to put his own skin in the game for peace when it comes to promoting the dialogue with Islam and the protection of the persecuted and people in the margins. He said Francis kept his Jesuit formation faithful by traveling to the boundaries of the faith.
“He wants to show that he is ready to take risks. The problem is that others will be at risk, ‘said Father Vicini, who’ as a doctor ‘was concerned that the pope was increasing the potential to put people’ in a vulnerable situation ‘. So he balances it. ‘
Paolo Benanti, a professor of ethics and bioethics at the Gregorian Papal University in Rome, said the danger of the pope’s trip during a pandemic had to be measured by the possibility of the security situation for Christians and other Iraqis on the significantly improve soil.
“Ethically speaking,” Professor Benanti said, the pope had to balance the danger to Christians of a lack of visits and emphasize their distress against the “danger of Covid-19 cases spreading from this kind of journey. The greater benefit to the health and well-being of the people can be peace. ”
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Father Spadaro envisioned the possibility of concrete improvements for Christians as a result of Francis’ encounter with Shiite leaders. But most experts, including priests on the ground in Iraq, consider it far-fetched to be imaginative.
“I do not think anyone is under the illusion that problems will disappear overnight,” said Rev. Joseph Cassar, the country director of the Jesuit refugee service, said and until the pope and his entourage arrive, the only Jesuit priest in the country.
But he also said the travel restrictions, social distance measures, filling in only a fraction of the outdoor stadium in Erbil and the lack of access to the pope should prevent the spread of the virus widely.
“One of the things that people are getting excited about is that not everyone will be able to meet the pope, which is kind of unfortunate,” he said. “But I have also met many people who say that the Pope is setting foot in Iraq is very encouraging. This is a good sign and support from his side, especially as the numbers are dwindling. ”
While the Vatican reckons that Iraqis must abide by all social distance rules, Father Cassar noted that people in the country tend to be “dismissive” and “nonchalant” about such rules, and that they did not seem so concerned, despite the increase in cases and the detection of new variants in Iraq.
The Chinese government said on Sunday that it would donate the first 50,000 doses of the country.
Francis is not the first pope to try to go to Iraq. In 2000, Pope John Paul II attempted to sail to Iraq, Egypt, and Israel, with the first stop to the city of Ur, which is traditionally the birthplace of Abraham, father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But negotiations with Saddam Hussein’s government broke down, leading to John Paul ‘crying’, Francis said.
Benedict XVI was invited by the Iraqi prime minister in 2008, but had no chance of waging war.
“Having a third pope who is not going is a very bad sign,” Father Spadaro said.
Security for the trip also emerged after recent suicide bombings in Baghdad, rocket attacks on US coalition forces, including near the Erbil airport, where the pope will arrive this weekend, and retaliatory airstrikes by the Biden government.
Francis said before the trip that even if the Iraqis only saw him on television, it meant something, because “they will see that the pope is in their country.” He added: “I am the pastor of people who are suffering.”
“The best way to interpret this journey is as an act of love,” he said. Bruni said Tuesday, arguing that love by nature “can be interpreted as extreme.”