Biden hails Pope Francis’ ‘historic’ trip to Iraq

President Joe Biden stated his admiration for Pope Francis on March 8, after the pontiff’s four-day visit to Iraq.

“Pope Francis’ visit was a historic and welcome first for the country,” Biden stated. He noted the trip “sent an important message, as Pope Francis said himself, that ‘fraternity is more durable than fratricide, that hope is more powerful than death, that peace more powerful than war.’”
Pope Francis completed his visit to Iraq on March 8, the first-ever visit to the country by a pope. During the March 5-8 trip, he met with political and diplomatic leaders and Catholic bishops, priests and laypeople.

The pontiff also met with leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and took part in an ecumenical meeting at the home of Abraham in Ur. At the meeting, Pope Francis appealed for peace, saying “let us affirm that God is merciful and that the greatest blasphemy is to profane his name by hating our brothers and sisters.”
At a Mass before 10,000 attendees in Erbil, Pope Francis praised the generosity of Iraqi Christians “even amid great poverty and difficulty.”
“Today, I can see at first hand that the church in Iraq is alive, that Christ is alive and at work in this, his holy and faithful people,” Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis also visited Mosul, once the second-largest city in Iraq, which was occupied by ISIS from 2014 until 2017. Biden noted the “depravity and intolerance” of ISIS in the city.
The U.S. in 2016 had declared that ISIS had committed genocide in Iraq and Syria against Christians, Yazidis and Shi’a Muslims and Christians had reported horrific atrocities committed by ISIS in Mosul; the accounts included murder, rape, destruction of churches and selling Christians into slavery. The Syriac Catholic Patriarch of Antioch reported 500 people killed by ISIS when they invaded Mosul.

Biden is just the second Catholic U.S. president. While leading U.S. bishops have commended some of his policies on immigration and fighting poverty, they have also condemned his support for taxpayer-funded abortion and gender ideology.

On March 8, he stated his admiration for Pope Francis “for his commitment to promoting religious tolerance, the common bonds of our humanity and interfaith understanding.”

Other U.S. offices and Catholic leaders hailed the papal trip. The Office of International Religious Freedom at the U.S. State Department commended the visit, calling it “a momentous opportunity to advance interfaith dialogue and harmony in Iraq and throughout the region.”
“His holiness Pope Francis’ visit shows his solidarity with the Iraqi people, including vulnerable members of religious minority groups, who have suffered under the brutality of ISIS,” the office stated.

Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington, D.C. said the trip was a reminder of “hope.”
“His journey to Iraq reminds the entire world that hatred can never be the final word spoken  only the word hope. May he succeed in his efforts so that peace and friendship are given a rebirth,” the cardinal wrote in his Sunday column for the archdiocesan paper.