Pope Francis has landed this Monday at noon in Baghdad, where he will begin a three-day trip through Iraq.
A risky expedition due to the health and security crisis that the country is going through, but of enormous political and spiritual significance.
"A duty to a land martyred for so many years," he specified on board the papal plane before journalists.
The pontiff, the first to visit the country and a region with a Shiite majority, wants to get closer to the Christian minorities in Iraq and, at the same time, build bridges with Islam and meet one of its main leaders: the great Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
At the airport, the country's prime minister, Mustafa Abdellatif Mshatat, was waiting for him.
Then he was transferred to the presidential palace aboard an armored passenger car, where he will be received by the head of state, Barham Ahmed Salih Qassim.
The Pope arrives in a country confined by the pandemic that will attend his acts, almost all the time, through the windows of his houses and televisions.
Except for the mass for 10,000 people that will be celebrated in an Erbil stadium on Sunday, the rest of the meetings will be behind closed doors and with a reduced number of participants.
For the Vatican, however, it is the "most relevant trip of the pontificate", according to a high source of the Holy See.
Francisco himself explained in a video message on Thursday the idea of the trip.
"I come as a repentant pilgrim to implore the Lord for forgiveness and reconciliation after years of war and terrorism, to ask God for the consolation of hearts and the healing of wounds."
In all, the pope is scheduled to deliver seven speeches, all in Italian.
Francis' travels —this is number 33— have always been directed to the peripheries of the world and of Christianity.
Places where Christian communities live under threat or have suffered attacks caused by armed conflicts, such as Iraq.
"I would like to bring you the affectionate caress of the whole Church, which is close to you and the tormented Middle East and encourages you to move forward," he adds, while exhorting them not to give up: "Let us not allow the terrible sufferings to be imposed that you have lived and that it hurts so much.
We do not give in to the spread of evil, "he said.
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Christians numbered 1.5 million of the 25 million Iraqis in 2003, when the US intervention toppled Saddam Hussein.
Today the figures are estimated between 150,000 and 300,000 out of a total of 40 million citizens (57% under 25 years of age).
They were victims of the wars and sectarianisms of the country in the middle of the first decade of this century.
Between 2014 and 2017, the Islamic State (ISIS) tried to end its presence in the areas it controlled.
They marked their houses with the letter "n", for Nazarenes.
And in many cases, also among the Yazidis, they sold women as slaves.
The trip, however, also has a geopolitical component, with the attempt to build bridges with the Shiite community, in permanent dispute with the United States.
The most important appointment, in fact, is scheduled for Saturday, when he will meet with the spiritual leader of Iraq's Shiites (and one of the most influential figures of Shi'a in the world), Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, in Najaf.
The official program describes it as a courtesy visit.
But its magnitude transcends the merely formal.
Sistani, 90, does not appear in public and receives hardly any visitors.
Since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, he has become one of the country's leading figures.
It is not known whether a joint document such as the one that involved the agreement on the Human Fraternity for Peace in the World that was drawn up in 2019 with Sheikh Ahmed al Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al Azhar (Egypt) and the highest Sunni authority, will be signed. .
Safety will be one of the keys to the trip.
Francisco will make all his trips in the cities he will visit (Baghdad, Mosul, Erbil, Najaf, Qaraqosh) aboard an armored and covered car (he usually does it aboard a regular passenger car or in a kind of convertible vehicle).
Security, especially since the route has been known for a long time, has been reinforced in all the places that the Pope will tread.
The memory of the double attack on January 21 that killed 32 people in Baghdad and the rocket attack on a coalition base adjacent to the Erbil airport on February 15 still weighs heavily.
The strong symbolism of the trip will have high points in places like Mosul, from where the ISIS leader, Abubaker al Baghdadi, proclaimed himself Caliph of all Muslims in 2014 after conquering the city.