Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State is in Iraq, a Muslim dominated country where he called for freedom of conscience and religion.
Pope Francis said during an interfaith service in southern Iraq on Saturday that freedom of conscious and religion were “fundamental rights” that should be recognised everywhere.
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Iraq is a Muslim-majority country whose Christian population has shrunk in the past two decades to just one percent of its 40 million people, with minorities still complaining of persecution and ostracisation.
Pope Francis made a plea for peace on Saturday, telling those gathered at an interreligious service in southern Iraq that he hoped the world would “journey from conflict to unity.”
“Let us ask for this in praying for the whole Middle East. Here I think especially of neighbouring war-torn Syria,” he said in remarks during the service.
Pope Francis condemned violent religious extremism Saturday during an interfaith prayer service at the site of the ancient city of Ur, where the Prophet Abraham is thought to have been born.
“We believers cannot be silent when terrorism abuses religion,” he told the congregation, who included members of religious minorities persecuted under the Islamic State group’s three-year rule of much of northern Iraq. (AFP)
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