The Tablet March 4, 2021
Father Ammar Altony Yako celebrates Mass at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Qaraqosh, Iraq, Feb. 23, 2021. Pope Francis plans to Qaraqosh March 7 during his March 5-8 trip to Iraq. (Photo: CNS/Thaier al-Sudani, Reuters)
By John L. Aleen
ROME (Crux) – Tomorrow Pope Francis leaves for Iraq, and in most of the Christian world it’ll be seen as a trip to honor the memory of a martyred Christian population that suffered unimaginable horrors under an ISIS occupation of the Nineveh Plains region of the country between 2014 and 2017.
For Muslims, however, it’ll be seen more as a gesture of outreach to the Shi’a branch of Islam, especially on March 6 when the pontiff is scheduled to travel to Najaf to meet Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, widely considered the most authoritative leader for Shi’ite Muslims. The Shi’ites represent somewhere between 10 to 15 percent of the Islamic world, roughly 200 million believers, concentrated in the