Pope holds historic meeting with Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric

NAJAF (Iraq) • Pope Francis entered a narrow alleyway in Iraq's holy city of Najaf to hold a historic meeting with the country's top Shi'ite cleric, and visited the birthplace of Prophet Abraham to condemn violence in the name of God as "the greatest blasphemy".

The back-to-back inter-religious events yesterday, some 200km apart, one in a dusty, built-up city and the other in a desert plain, reinforced the main theme of the Pope's risky trip to Iraq - that the country has suffered far too much.

"From this place, where faith was born, from the land of our father Abraham, let us affirm that God is merciful and that the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters," he said in Ur, where Abraham was born.

The meeting in the southern city of Najaf during the Pope's whirlwind tour of Iraq marked the first time a pope has met such a senior Shi'ite cleric.

On his trips abroad, the Pontiff has visited predominantly Muslim countries, including Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the Palestinian territories, using those trips to call for inter-religious dialogue.

After his 55-minute meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Pope Francis headed for the ruins of ancient Ur in southern Iraq, revered as the birthplace of Abraham, father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

After the meeting, Grand Ayatollah Sistani called on world religious leaders to hold great powers to account and for wisdom and sense to prevail over war.

The Pope also called for religious communities to work together.

"(He) underlined the importance of collaboration and friendship between religious communities so that, by cultivating mutual respect and dialogue, we can contribute to the good of Iraq, of the region," the Vatican said in a statement after the meeting.

Grand Ayatollah Sistani is one of the most important figures in Shi'ite Islam, both within Iraq and beyond. He wields enormous influence over politics.

His edicts sent Iraqis to free polls for the first time in 2005, rallied hundreds of thousands of men to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in 2014, and toppled an Iraqi government under pressure from mass demonstrations in 2019.

The 90-year-old rarely takes meetings, and has refused talks with Iraq's current and former prime ministers, according to officials close to him.

He agreed to meet the Pope on condition that no Iraqi officials would be present, said a source in the President's office.

The meeting with Pope Francis took place at Grand Ayatollah Sistani's humble home, which he has rented for decades, located in a narrow alleyway in Najaf.

Pope Francis began his most risky foreign trip on Friday, flying into Iraq amid the tightest security ever seen for a papal visit, to appeal to the country's leaders and people to end militant violence and religious strife.

The country has deployed thousands of security officers to protect the Pope during the visit, which comes after a spate of rocket and suicide bomb attacks and a spike in Covid-19 cases.

Pope Francis said he was making the trip to show solidarity with Iraq's devastated Christian community of around 300,000, which is just one-fifth of the number before the United States invasion in 2003 and the brutal Islamist militant violence that followed.

REUTERS