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Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib

Pope Francis’ visit to Iraq shows how love will ultimately prevail

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AS IT HAPPENED: Pope Francis meets Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani

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Shiite cleric, Ali Al-Sistani, met the Pope at his home in Najaf, the seat of the Iraqi Shiite clergy, on the second day of the pontiff’s historic tour of Iraq. (Office of Shiite cleric, Ali Al-Sistani)
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Pope Francis arrives to meet Iraq top cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani in the holy shrine city of Najaf on March 6, 2021. (AFP)
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Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Perolin, third left, arrives with a delegation to the House of Abraham in the ancient city of Ur in southern Iraq ahead of Pope Francis’s visit on March 6, 2021. (AFP)
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Pope Francis called for an end to extremism, violence and corruption as the pontiff’s historic visit to Iraq got underway on Friday. (AFP)
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Pope Francis signs the guest book at the Syriac Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad on March 5, 2021. (AFP)
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Pope Francis delivers a sermon at the Syriac Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation Baghdad at the start of the first ever papal visit to Iraq on March 5, 2021. (AFP)
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Musicians play traditional instruments as Iraqi President Barham Salih welcomes Pope Francis at the presidential palace in Baghdad’s Green Zone on March 5, 2021. (AFP)
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Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi receives Pope Francis upon his arrival in Baghdad. (Iraqi prime minister’s office Facebook page via AFP)
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Updated 07 March 2021
Arab News
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AS IT HAPPENED: Pope Francis meets Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani

  • Pope’s visit comes as Iraq attempts to claw its way to stability
Updated 07 March 2021
Arab News

DUBAI: Pope Francis and Iraq’s top Shiite cleric delivered a powerful message of peaceful coexistence on Saturday in a historic first meeting between the leaders of Roman Catholicism and Shiite Islam.

The Shiite cleric, Ali Al-Sistani, met the Pope at his home in Najaf, the seat of the Iraqi Shiite clergy, on the second day of the pontiff’s historic tour of Iraq.

Pope Francis arrived in Iraq on Friday and made a speech in which he called for an end to extremism, violence and corruption.

The head of the Catholic church began the first-ever papal trip to the country by meeting government officials in Baghdad, before traveling to a church where Christians were massacred by militants in 2010.

His visit comes as Iraq attempts to claw its way to stability after years of sectarian conflict, the Daesh occupation, chronic corruption, and widespread anger at government officials for failing to provide basic services.

At Our Lady of Salvation church, he paid tribute to the 58 people who were killed in an extremist attack in 2010, one of the deadliest targeting Christians.

Follow live coverage of his second day itinerary below (All times GMT)

17:00 - With the mass finished, that concludes the Pope's public engagements on the second day of his visit. Remember to check back on arabnews.com for coverage of Sunday's events, the highlight of which will be a meeting with the president and the prime minister of the autonomous region of Kurdistan in Erbil.

Pope Francis will also visit and make a speech at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Qaraqosh and deliver a mass at the Franso Hariri Stadium in Erbil.

15:00 - Now, the Pope delivers a mass at the Chaldean Catheral of Saint Joseph. Watch it live below...

14:30 - Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib wrote about how the visit of Pope Francis begins a new chapter not only for Christians in Iraq but for all Eastern Christians. Read her opinion piece below.

Opinion

This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)

14:00: In case you missed some of the fantastic images from the first day of the Pope's visit, you can check out our gallery here...

 

13:00 - ICYMI: Lebanese President Michel Aoun welcomed the pope’s arrival in Iraq on Friday, saying he hoped it would be a “push toward establishing the genuine peace” that people in the region needed. To read more, click here.

09:34: Pope Francis is set to return Baghdad after attending an interfaith meeting at the ruins of Ur in southern Iraq, the traditional birthplace of the Prophet Abraham, father of Muslim and Christian faiths.




Above, a general view of the ancient archeological site of Ur, traditionally believed to be the birthplace of Abraham, in Ur near Nassiriya, Iraq. Iraqiya TV/Reuters TV via Reuters

09:08: Pope Francis is urging Iraq’s Muslim and Christian religious leaders to put aside animosities and work together for peace and unity during an interfaith meeting in the traditional birthplace of the Prophet Abraham, father of their faiths.

He told the gathering: “This is true religiosity: to worship God and to love our neighbor.”

Francis traveled to the ruins of Ur in southern Iraq on Saturday to reinforce his message of interreligious tolerance and fraternity during the first-ever papal visit to Iraq, a country riven by religious and ethnic divisions.




Pope Francis said that he prays for ‘peace, unity’ in the Middle East ‘especially Syria’ during the interreligious meeting. (AFP)

Francis told the faith leaders that it was fitting that they come together in Ur, “back to our origins, to the sources of God’s work, to the birth of our religions” to pray together for peace as children of Abraham, the prophet common to Muslims, Christians and Jews.

He said: “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. Hostility, extremism and violence are not born of a religious heart: they are betrayals of religion.”

He said there could never be peace as long as Iraqis viewed people of different faiths as the “other.”

He said: “Peace does not demand winners or losers, but rather brothers and sisters who, for all the misunderstandings and hurts of the past, are journeying from conflict to unity.”

08:05: Pope Francis attends an interreligious meeting at the Plain of Ur during day two of his apostolic tour of Iraq.

The meeting takes place in the shadow of Ur’s magnificent ziggurat, the 6,000-year-old archaeological complex near Nasiriyah in southern Iraq.




Pope Francis attends an interreligious meeting at the archaeological site of Ur near Nasiriyah, southern Iraq on March 6, 2021. (AFP)

07: 28: Top Shiite cleric Ali Al-Sistani has told Pope Francis that Iraq Christians should live in ‘peace’, a statement from his office said.

Al-Sistani ‘affirmed his concern that Christian citizens should live like all Iraqis in peace and security, and with their full constitutional rights,’ the statement office said.

For its part, the Vatican said Francis thanked Al-Sistani and the Shiite people for having “raised his voice in defense of the weakest and most persecuted” during some of the most violent times in Iraq’s recent history.

He said Al-Sistani’s message of peace affirmed “the sacredness of human life and the importance of the unity of the Iraqi people.”




Doves are released to mark Pope Francis’s private meeting Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani at his home in Najaf. (Vatican Media)

07:00: Pope Francis leaves the home of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani in Najaf after meeting with him. He is expected to depart for Nassiriya to lead an interreligious meeting at the Plain of Ur in southern Iraq which is revered as the birthplace of Abraham, father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Pope will afterwards return to Baghdad.

The visit was carried live on Iraqi television, and residents cheered the meeting of two respected faith leaders.

“We welcome the pope’s visit to Iraq and especially to the holy city of Najaf and his meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani,” said Najaf resident Haidar Al-Ilyawi. “It is an historic visit and hope it will be good for Iraq and the Iraqi people.”




Pope Francis leaves the home of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani in Najaf after meeting with him. (Screenshot)

05:05: Pope Francis arrives in Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani’s home Najaf.

The Vatican’s hope was that Francis would sign a document with Al-Sistani pledging human fraternity, just as he did with Sunni Islam’s influential grand imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed El-Tayeb, based in Egypt.

03:45: Pope Francis departs from Baghdad and will travel by plane to the cities of Najaf and Ur.

- with agencies

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Go to Arab News’ dedicated In Focus section on the Pope's visit to Iraq for coverage of the historic trip. Click here.

 

Topics: Pope Francis in Iraq Pope Francis Iraq

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AS IT HAPPENED: Pope Francis arrives in Iraq

Israel’s settler movement takes victory lap as a sparse outpost becomes a settlement within a month

Updated 21 January 2026
AP
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Israel’s settler movement takes victory lap as a sparse outpost becomes a settlement within a month

  • Smotrich, who has been in charge of Israeli settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank
Updated 21 January 2026
AP

YATZIV SETTLEMENT, West Bank: Celebratory music blasting from loudspeakers mixed with the sounds of construction, almost drowning out calls to prayer from a mosque in the Palestinian town across this West Bank valley.
Orthodox Jewish women in colorful head coverings, with babies on their hips, shared platters of fresh vegetables as soldiers encircled the hilltop, keeping guard.
The scene Monday reflected the culmination of Israeli settlers’ long campaign to turn this site, overlooking the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour, into a settlement. Over the years, they fended off plans to build a hospital for Palestinian children on the land, always holding tight to the hope the land would one day become theirs.
That moment is now, they say.
Smotrich goes on settlement spree
After two decades of efforts, it took just a month for their new settlement, called “Yatziv,” to go from an unauthorized outpost of a few mobile homes to a fully recognized settlement. Fittingly, the new settlement’s name means “stable” in Hebrew.
“We are standing stable here in Israel,” Finance Minister and settler leader Bezalel Smotrich told The Associated Press at Monday’s inauguration ceremony. “We’re going to be here forever. We will never establish a Palestinian state here.”
With leaders like Smotrich holding key positions in Israel’s government and establishing close ties with the Trump administration, settlers are feeling the wind at their backs.
Smotrich, who has been in charge of Israeli settlement policy for the past three years, has overseen an aggressive construction and expansion binge aimed at dismantling any remaining hopes of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank.
While most of the world considers the settlements illegal, their impact on the ground is clear, with Palestinians saying the ever-expanding construction hems them in and makes it nearly impossible to establish a viable independent state. The Palestinians seek the West Bank, captured by Israel in 1967, as part of a future state.
With Netanyahu and Trump, settlers feel emboldened
Settlers had long set their sights on the hilltop, thanks to its position in a line of settlements surrounding Jerusalem and because they said it was significant to Jewish history. But they put up the boxy prefab homes in November because days earlier, Palestinian attackers had stabbed an Israeli to death at a nearby junction.
The attack created an impetus to justify the settlement, the local settlement council chair, Yaron Rosenthal, told AP. With the election of Israel’s far-right government in late 2022, Trump’s return to office last year and the November attack, conditions were ripe for settlers to make their move, Rosenthal said.
“We understood that there was an opportunity,” he said. “But we didn’t know it would happen so quickly.”
“Now there is the right political constellation for this to happen.”
Smotrich announced approval of the outpost, along with 18 others, on Dec. 21. That capped 20 years of effort, said Nadia Matar, a settler activist.
“Shdema was nearly lost to us,” said Matar, using the name of an Israeli military base at the site. “What prevented that outcome was perseverance.”
Back in 2006, settlers were infuriated upon hearing that Israel’s government was in talks with the US to build a Palestinian children’s hospital on the land, said Hagit Ofran, a director at Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group, especially as the US Agency for International Development was funding a “peace park” at the base of the hill.
The mayor of Beit Sahour urged the US Consulate to pressure Israel to begin hospital construction, while settlers began weekly demonstrations at the site calling on Israel to quash the project, according to consulate files obtained through WikiLeaks.
It was “interesting” that settlers had “no religious, legal, or ... security claim to that land,” wrote consulate staffer Matt Fuller at the time, in an email he shared with the AP. “They just don’t want the Palestinians to have it — and for a hospital no less — a hospital that would mean fewer permits for entry to Jerusalem for treatment.”
The hospital was never built. The site was converted into a military base after the Netanyahu government came to power in 2009. From there, settlers quickly established a foothold by creating makeshift cultural center at the site, putting on lectures, readings and exhibits
Speaking to the AP, Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister at the time the hospital was under discussion, said that was the tipping point.
“Once it is military installation, it is easier than to change its status into a new outpost, a new settlement and so on,” he said.
Olmert said Netanyahu — who has served as prime minister nearly uninterrupted since then — was “committed to entirely different political directions from the ones that I had,” he said. “They didn’t think about cooperation with the Palestinians.”
Palestinians say the land is theirs
The continued legalization of settlements and spiking settler violence — which rose by 27 percent in 2025, according to Israel’s military — have cemented a fearful status quo for West Bank Palestinians.
The land now home to Yatziv was originally owned by Palestinians from Beit Sahour, said the town’s mayor, Elias Isseid.
“These lands have been owned by families from Beit Sahour since ancient times,” he said.
Isseid worries more land loss is to come. Yatziv is the latest in a line of Israeli settlements to pop up around Beit Sahour, all of which are connected by a main highway that runs to Jerusalem without entering Palestinian villages. The new settlement “poses a great danger to our children, our families,” he said.
A bypass road, complete with a new yellow gate, climbs up to Yatziv. The peace park stands empty.

 

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