British intelligence thwarted two terrorist plots to murder Pope Francis during his 2021 visit to Iraq, a new book has revealed.
Spies tipped off the Vatican's security detail that a female suicide bomber had been dispatched to the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to coincide with the Pontiff’s historic visit to the city.
They learned too that terrorists also planned to propel a speeding truck loaded with explosives into the Vatican entourage with the aim of assassinating the Pope.
The revelations come in a new book called <em>Hope: The Autobiography</em>, a book by Francis co-authored by Carlo Musso, excerpts of which have appeared in <em>Corriere della Sera</em>, the Italian daily newspaper.
The Pope wrote: “The [Iraqi] police had alerted the Vatican Gendarmerie to a report from British intelligence: a woman packed with explosives, a young suicide bomber, was on her way to Mosul to blow herself up during the papal visit.
“And a van had also left at full speed with the same intent.”
The day after the attempted plots were expected to take place, Francis quizzed a security official about what had happened to the terrorists.
“The commander replied laconically: ‘They are no more’,” he wrote.
“The Iraqi police had intercepted them and blown them up…This too was the poisoned fruit of war.”
Mosul, a city with a large Christian minority, was over-run by Islamic State terrorists in 2014, driving tens of thousands of refugees to the sanctuary of Kurdish-controlled Iraqi territory.
Pope Francis said he wanted to visit Mosul “at all costs” following its liberation to encourage Christians to return and remain in their historic homelands, which were evangelised by St Thomas the Apostle.
The ruined city was “a wound in the Pope’s heart”, the book says, with Francis describing how the impact of viewing the destruction from a helicopter hit him like “a punch to the gut”.
The autobiography, which was intended originally for release after the Pope’s death, will be published in 80 countries in January 2025.
Pope Francis said the Islamists had left Mosul looking like an “X-ray image of hatred”.
King Charles III recently attended a special Advent service for Iraqi and other persecuted Christians in the Middle East that was held at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, in London.
The service at the famous Jesuit church in the British capital on 17 December, which was co-hosted by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), commemorated and focused on the 10th anniversary of the invasion by ISIS of Mosul and the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq.
<a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/king-charles-attends-advent-service-at-farm-street-for-persecuted-christians-in-iraq-and-syria/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><em><strong>RELATED: King Charles attends Advent service at Farm Street for Christians in Iraq, Syria</strong></em></mark></a>
<em>Photo: Pope Francis, accompanied by the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Najib Michaeel Moussa (left), looks on at the ruins of the Syriac Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception (Al-Tahira-l-Kubra), Mosul, Iraq, 7 March 2021. (Photo by VINCENZO PINTO/AFP via Getty Images.)</em>
British intelligence thwarted two terrorist plots to murder Pope Francis during his 2021 visit to Iraq, a new book has revealed.
Spies tipped off the Vatican's security detail that a female suicide bomber had been dispatched to the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to coincide with the Pontiff’s historic visit to the city.
They learned too that terrorists also planned to propel a speeding truck loaded with explosives into the Vatican entourage with the aim of assassinating the Pope.
The revelations come in a new book called <em>Hope: The Autobiography</em>, a book by Francis co-authored by Carlo Musso, excerpts of which have appeared in <em>Corriere della Sera</em>, the Italian daily newspaper.
The Pope wrote: “The [Iraqi] police had alerted the Vatican Gendarmerie to a report from British intelligence: a woman packed with explosives, a young suicide bomber, was on her way to Mosul to blow herself up during the papal visit.
“And a van had also left at full speed with the same intent.”
The day after the attempted plots were expected to take place, Francis quizzed a security official about what had happened to the terrorists.
“The commander replied laconically: ‘They are no more’,” he wrote.
“The Iraqi police had intercepted them and blown them up…This too was the poisoned fruit of war.”
Mosul, a city with a large Christian minority, was over-run by Islamic State terrorists in 2014, driving tens of thousands of refugees to the sanctuary of Kurdish-controlled Iraqi territory.
Pope Francis said he wanted to visit Mosul “at all costs” following its liberation to encourage Christians to return and remain in their historic homelands, which were evangelised by St Thomas the Apostle.
The ruined city was “a wound in the Pope’s heart”, the book says, with Francis describing how the impact of viewing the destruction from a helicopter hit him like “a punch to the gut”.
The autobiography, which was intended originally for release after the Pope’s death, will be published in 80 countries in January 2025.
Pope Francis said the Islamists had left Mosul looking like an “X-ray image of hatred”.
King Charles III recently attended a special Advent service for Iraqi and other persecuted Christians in the Middle East that was held at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, in London.
The service at the famous Jesuit church in the British capital on 17 December, which was co-hosted by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), commemorated and focused on the 10th anniversary of the invasion by ISIS of Mosul and the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq.
<a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/king-charles-attends-advent-service-at-farm-street-for-persecuted-christians-in-iraq-and-syria/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color"><em><strong>RELATED: King Charles attends Advent service at Farm Street for Christians in Iraq, Syria</strong></em></mark></a>
<em>Photo: Pope Francis, accompanied by the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Najib Michaeel Moussa (left), looks on at the ruins of the Syriac Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception (Al-Tahira-l-Kubra), Mosul, Iraq, 7 March 2021. (Photo by VINCENZO PINTO/AFP via Getty Images.)</em>
