Pope Benedict XVI has been invited to visit Iraq later this month as part of his tour of the Middle East, an Iraqi newspaper reported today. Al-Sabbah, quoting unnamed “parliamentary sources”, said that the Vatican was considering the idea.
There was no immediate comment from the Holy See.
The report said that Pope Benedict, who sets off for Jordan and Israel on Friday, had been invited by President Jalal Talabani and the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, to add Iraq to his itinerary.
The Pope’s visit “would let him see the situation on the ground, particularly the situation of the Christian community,” Al-Sabbah quoted the Baghdad deputy as saying.
In March Al-Sabbah reported that the US President Barack Obama would visit Baghdad in the beginning of April, which he duly did.
Last July Nuri al-Maliki invited Pope Benedict to visit Iraq, saying that it would help the process of reconciliation. Mr Maliki, who met the Pope at Castelgandolfo, the pontiff's summer residence south of Rome, denied that Christians were being persecuted by Muslims in Iraq.
“We renewed our invitation for his Holiness to visit Iraq,” he said after the audience.
“He welcomed the invitation. And we hope that he will be making the visit as soon as he can. His visit would represent support for the efforts of love and peace in Iraq.”
The late Pope John Paul II planned to visit Iraq — ancient Mesopotamia and the land of the patriarch Abraham — in 2000 as part of his tour of the Holy Land, but was denied permission by the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Since the 2003 US-led invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein many of Iraq’s Christians have left the country after being targeted by Muslim extremists.
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