In one of his first major planned events since the outbreak of the coronavirus, Pope Francis has recently accepted the invitation of the Republic of Iraq and the local Catholic Church there to visit the war-torn nation from March 5-8, 2021. The Vatican’s announcement made clear that he will visit “Baghdad, the plain of Ur, linked to the memory of Abraham, the city of Erbil, as well as Mosul and Qaraqosh in the plain of Ninevah.”
As one can clearly see, the community in this area has roots dating back not only to Christ’s day but to centuries earlier, as evidenced when Old Testament figures like Abraham and Jonah are referenced. There is an unbroken tradition of the monotheistic faiths encountering and molding one another’s beliefs and practices in the region, both for good and too often for ill over the centuries.
The current Chaldean patriarch, Cardinal Louis Raphaël I Sako, recently pointed out the obvious, that the region has had unbelievable challenges in maintaining peace among differing voices that trace their roots to the ancient world, and to the very cradle of civilization. “As you all know, Chaldean as well as other Iraqi Churches and those throughout the Middle East are experiencing the pressure of various political, economic and social challenges due to conflicts, extremism, immigration and the consequences of the corona pandemic that have confused the vision and complicated relations and work. This visit must be invested to be a major turning point, so that the faith and hope inside us become a commitment.”
The cardinal makes clear that it is a further step on the path to peaceful coexistence between Christians, Muslims and Jews in the region and beyond.
Many Americans do not realize that the largest number of Eastern Catholics in the United States are those of the Chaldean Catholic Church, a particular church sui juris in full communion with the pope and the rest of Catholicism. They have roughly three times the number of the second largest of these churches, the Indian Syro-Malabar Church. The largest Assyrian/Chaldean community in the country is located in the Detroit area, though the diaspora is present in many other urban centers as well. Of course, Iraqi emigration from the Middle East has naturally increased in recent decades as violence exploded throughout the region.
The pope’s visit is firmly in line with his repeated highlighting of the uniquely important contribution that minority Christian communities can offer to the world. If Benedict XVI focused to a large extent on the re-evangelization of a rapidly secularizing Europe throughout his papacy, Francis’ ecclesiology has emphasized the “leaven” that Christians can represent in societies where they are only a tiny fraction of the overall population — for example in Myanmar, Bangladesh, Morocco, Sri Lanka, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Mauritius and Mali. This pastoral care for these tiny populations is exhibited not only in apostolic visits, but also in the elevation of church leaders in these places to important roles in the college of cardinals or Vatican offices, oftentimes for the first time in history. Iraq, and neighboring Syria, are no exception, as Francis has repeatedly drawn the world’s attention to them in various gestures, speeches and documents.
Francis’s reflections on the types of followers that Christ himself first called lead the pope to find resonances in far-flung persecuted, outcast and suffering populations over and above longstanding centers of cultural, educational and socio-economic influence and power. His first visit as pope was not to Paris or Berlin or Brussels, but to Lampedusa, the island where refugees from every faith or none at all risk everything on the seas for a chance at survival and bread for their children. He received enormous criticism for washing the feet of prisoners and women instead of seminarians in a gilded basilica during Holy Thursday celebrations. He has repeatedly said he wants a church that is “bruised, hurting and dirty” over one that remains locked in its own medieval structures and gets sick from its isolation and self-referentiality.
Perhaps no other community in the world could better represent such a suffering and broken people than that of Iraq, and so we must hope and pray that the obvious security and public health risks to the Holy Father are counterbalanced by the commitment to solidarity and trust in divine providence that the visit will embody and make manifest.
Originally from Collingswood, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
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