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Top Shiite cleric tells pope Iraq Christians should live in peace
By Qassim al-Kaabi with Catherine Marciano in Baghdad
Najaf, Iraq (AFP) March 6, 2021

Near Abraham's Iraq birthplace, lone Christians put hope in Pope
Nasiriyah, Iraq (AFP) March 6, 2021 - As Pope Francis prays for Iraq's minorities Saturday from the birthplace of the common patriarch of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths, one family will be listening particularly carefully.

Maher Tobia, 53, says his is the only remaining Christian family in the city of Nasiriyah, less than 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the desert site of the ancient city of Ur, where the Prophet Abraham is thought to have been born.

Pope Francis will hold an interfaith prayer service in Ur on Saturday morning, to be joined by Muslims as well as Christians and members of other Iraqi religious minorities, including the Yazidis and Sabeans.

"It'll be a message of friendship and peace. And hopefully it means the situation will improve for us," Tobia told AFP in his ornately decorated living room in Nasiriyah.

Tobia and his brother head the only two remaining Christian households in Nasiriyah -- and they were both extremely reluctant to share details of day-to-day life in the city, where most residents are Shiite Muslims and tribal traditions often trump the law.

Over the past two years, violence at anti-government protests in the city has left dozens dead, including six demonstrators who were shot dead in the weeks leading up to the Pope's visit.

There are no churches, which means Tobia has to travel to Baghdad or to the main southern city of Basra for the weddings or funerals of fellow Christians.

But he is glad to talk about his family history.

His father was born in Nasiriyah just before World War I to a businessman who had settled in the city when it was under Ottoman rule.

Throughout the following decades -- which brought World War II, the rise and fall of the Iraqi monarchy and finally the socialist Baath state led by Saddam Hussein -- the Tobia family stayed in the city, now capital of Dhi Qar province.

- 'Man of stature' -

In the 1990s, the world imposed crippling international sanctions against Saddam.

"There were only 20 to 30 Christian families around at the time," recalled Tobia, saying they were mostly public sector employees on short assignments to Nasiriyah from other cities.

Following the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam in 2003, those numbers dwindled further: "Only two Christian families stayed in Nasiriyah," he said.

Nearly two decades on, the Tobia name is the only one left, he said.

All of the Christian friends he had during his childhood have left, either to the capital or to the autonomous Kurdish region in the north.

"Often, after that first move, they'd leave the country," he said.

The dramatic drop in the number of Christians has been mirrored nationwide: from 1.5 million before the invasion, less than 400,000 remain today.

Francis' four-day tour is the first-ever papal visit to Iraq and he aims to use it to encourage the country's remaining Christians to deepen their roots.

Tobia, for one, is hopeful.

"The coming of a man of this stature with this much religious weight could benefit Dhi Qar and its pilgrimage sites," he said.

"If this visit is done well, it could have a huge impact."

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the authority for most of the world's Shiite Muslims, told Pope Francis in a historic meeting in the Iraqi city of Najaf Saturday that the country's Christians should live in "peace."

The meeting, on the second day of the first-ever papal visit to Iraq, marked a landmark moment in modern religious history.

Pope Francis is defying a second wave of coronavirus cases and renewed security fears to make a "long-awaited" trip to Iraq, aiming to comfort the country's ancient Christian community and deepen his dialogue with other religions.

The meeting between the two elderly men lasted 50 minutes, with Sistani's office putting out a statement shortly afterwards thanking Francis, 84, for visiting the holy city of Najaf.

Sistani, 90, "affirmed his concern that Christian citizens should live like all Iraqis in peace and security, and with their full constitutional rights," it said.

His office published an image of the two, neither wearing masks: Sistani in a black turban with his wispy grey beard reaching down to his black robe and Francis all in white, looking directly at the grand ayatollah.

Sistani is extremely reclusive and rarely grants meetings but made an exception to host Francis, an outspoken proponent of interreligious dialogue.

The Pope had landed earlier at Najaf airport, where posters had been set up featuring a famous saying by Ali, the fourth caliph and the Prophet Mohammed's relative, who is buried in the holy city.

"People are of two kinds, either your brothers in faith or your equals in humanity," read the banners.

- 'We feel proud' -

The meeting is one of the highlights of Francis's four-day trip to war-scarred Iraq, where Sistani has played a key role in tamping down tensions in recent decades.

It took months of careful negotiations between Najaf and the Vatican to secure the one-on-one meeting.

"We feel proud of what this visit represents and we thank those who made it possible," said Mohamed Ali Bahr al-Ulum, a senior cleric in Najaf.

Pope Francis, a strong proponent of interfaith dialogue, has met top Sunni clerics in several Muslim-majority countries, including Bangladesh, Morocco, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Sistani, meanwhile, is followed by most of the world's 200 million Shiites -- a minority among Muslims but the majority in Iraq -- and is a national figure for Iraqis.

"Ali Sistani is a religious leader with a high moral authority," said Cardinal Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, the head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and a specialist in Islamic studies.

Sistani began his religious studies at the age of five, climbing through the ranks of Shiite clergy to grand ayatollah in the 1990s.

While Saddam Hussein was in power, he languished under house arrest for years, but emerged after the US-led invasion toppled the repressive regime in 2003 to play an unprecedented public role.

In 2019, he stood with Iraqi protesters demanding better public services and rejecting external interference in Iraq's domestic affairs.

On Friday in Baghdad, Pope Francis made a similar plea.

"May partisan interests cease, those outside interests who don't take into account the local population," Francis said.

- 'Great prestige' -

Sistani has had a complicated relationship with his birthplace Iran, where the other main seat of Shiite religious authority lies: Qom.

While Najaf affirms the separation of religion and politics, Qom believes the top cleric -- Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- should also govern.

Iraqi clerics and Christian leaders said the visit could strengthen Najaf's standing compared to Qom.

"The Najaf school has great prestige and is more secular than the more religious Qom school," Ayuso said.

"Najaf places more weight on social affairs," he added.

In Abu Dhabi in 2019, the Pope met Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the imam of the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo and a key authority for Sunni Muslims.

They signed a text encouraging Christian-Muslim dialogue, which Catholic clerics hoped Sistani would also endorse, but clerical sources in Najaf told AFP it is unlikely.

While the Pope has been vaccinated and encouraged others to get the jab, Sistani's office has not announced his vaccination.

Iraq is currently gripped by a resurgence of coronavirus cases, recording more than 5,000 infections and more than two dozen deaths daily.

Following his visit to the grand ayatollah, the pope will head to the desert site of the ancient city of Ur -- believed to be the birthplace of the Prophet Abraham, common patriarch of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths -- where he will host an interfaith service, with many of Iraq's other religious minorities in attendance.


Related Links
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Iraq on Wednesday hanged three men convicted on "terrorism" charges in a notorious southern prison, local officials said, despite repeated international condemnations of the country's execution record. The officials said the three Iraqis were executed in Nasiriyah prison in Dhi Qar province, the only detention centre in the country that carries out capital punishment. A 2005 law carries the death penalty for anyone convicted of "terrorism," which can include membership of an extremist group, ev ... read more

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