When the Pope advances this Saturday in the alley that leads to the home of Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Sovereign Pontiff will make an unprecedented and historic gesture.
For the first time, the highest Shiite dignitary in Iraq agrees to receive a Head of State at his home in the holy city of Nadjaf, not far from the mausoleum where Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law and founding figure of Shiism, is buried.
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Until now, the 90-year-old man in the black turban, a sign of his supposed ancestry with the Prophet, has only given audience to the UN representative in Baghdad.
Never meetings, however, neither with the ambassadors nor with the press.
If Sistani's words are rare, his authority goes beyond the religious framework.
In 2004, Paul Bremer, American proconsul in Baghdad after the fall of Saddam Hussein, did not fail to have the Constitution of the new Iraq endorsed by this powerful ayatollah, consulted by Iraqi politicians.
And in June 2014 when the jihadists, from Sunnism the other
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