Iraq’s urbane and impressive new president, Barham Salih, has invited the Pope to visit Ur, home of Abraham, in 2019. The invitation was extended to Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, during his Christmas visit to Baghdad in which he concelebrated the Christmas vigil Mass in Baghdad’s cathedral. The Iraqi cabinet, during that same visit, voted to make Christmas Day a public holiday in Iraq.
Is it, as commentator John Allen put it, a “turning point” in Vatican-Iraqi relations? Up to a point. Salih (pictured below with Cardinal Parolin), an Anglophile and secular Kurd whom I knew when I worked in Baghdad over a decade ago, is one of Iraq’s most forward-looking politicians. He would surely be keen to foster good relations with the Vatican; and he has little in common with violent sectarian militias, corrupt and bigoted local powerbrokers and terrorist groups who have collectively depopulated Iraq of its once million-plus, and ancient, Christian community.
