| By Caryle Murphy and Naseer Nouri
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 8, 2005; Page A18
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I35788-2005Apr07
BAGHDAD, April 7 -- In a city where churches have been bombed by Muslim insurgents and Christians are an imperiled minority, several hundred Catholics gathered at St. Joseph's Chaldean Church on Thursday to attend a special Mass for Pope John Paul II.
Under a golden, late afternoon sun, the worshipers passed through a protective cordon of red-bereted soldiers from the newly trained, mostly Muslim Iraqi army. Inside, amid air smoky with incense, a tearful congregation recalled the Polish-born man who had given help and hope to Iraq's dwindling Christian communities.
"The pope won the hearts of everybody because he worked for the good of all," said Patriarch Emmanuel III Delly, the head of Iraq's Chaldean Catholic Church. John Paul's death "was a loss not only for Iraqi Catholics and Christians but indeed it was a loss for the whole world," the patriarch said.
Delly concelebrated the Arabic-language Mass with the heads of three other Catholic communities here -- Latin, Armenian and Syrian -- and a representative of the papal nuncio's office.
"John Paul II has been very close to Iraqis," Archbishop Jean Sleiman of Baghdad's Roman Catholic, or Latin, community said in an interview this week. "Christians need a protector, or father, someone who protects them, and I think the pope is one who protected them."
John Paul opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and criticized the U.S.-inspired U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.
Sleiman and Delly both recalled the pope's disappointment at not being able to visit Iraq in 1999. "Officially, the regime said it couldn't protect him," Sleiman said, adding that he thought Saddam Hussein had been "afraid the pope would have more crowds than him."
Many in the congregation said it was a service they could not miss, despite the violence that makes travel risky in the Iraqi capital.
"I did not care if it is dangerous to come here today," said a government employee who gave only her first name, Haifa. "If I die, I will die here in the church with Jesus. When you have a soul of faith, it kills every fear inside your body."
Iraqi soldiers in pickup trucks were stationed several blocks from the church in all directions, searching cars, asking for ID cards and politely asking anyone not going to the service to take an alternative route.
Most Christians appeared happy with the extensive security. "I feel so safe," said Abu Adwar as he walked to the church with his wife and two children. "And did you notice that there was no American army around? It is a full Iraqi operation."
Iraq now has an estimated 800,000 Christians, but another 300,000 have emigrated since 1991, said Yonadam Kanna, one of six Christians elected to Iraq's new National Assembly. Sleiman said his Roman Catholic community had 60,000 members before the 1991 Persian Gulf War; now it has around 5,000.
In a display of solidarity, five Shiites, including a black-turbaned cleric from Iran, attended the Mass for the pope at St. Joseph's.
"It is a big honor to come here and join our friends and brothers at this service," said the Iranian, Ali Akbar Hakim.
"We lost a man who was a symbol for peace, justice and faith in the world, and we wish that God will replace him with a man like him," Hakim said of the pope. "We wish that God will take him to heaven and give his family and friends the patience to withstand this loss." | |
