Dressed all in black and wearing a Rolex, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi slowly climbed the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al Nuri in Mosul and declared himself caliph of the Islamic State. It was June 2014, and Baghdadi was attempting to lend historical and religious legitimacy to an orgy of violence that already included beheadings and human crucifixions and would soon add genocide and mass rape-slavery.
On March 7 of this year, dressed all in white, His Holiness Pope Francis slowly climbed the steps of a temporary platform in a public square surrounded by the ruins of four churches in Mosul. Reports say that his sciatica has been bothering him, and in videos from the trip, he has an obvious limp.
The two images, nearly seven years apart, show what can change when evil fails: everything. And while it’s not getting as much attention as some of the pope’s other visits do, the scene is arguably one of the most important of our era.
In fact, though it may seem counterintuitive, it was difficult for those in the West to get the full picture of ISIS’s brutality as well, and thus the full portrait of the joy of liberation from the Islamic State. Its rule was so gruesome that it largely couldn’t be shown in American print and TV news. It is one thing to know abstractly that ISIS beheaded people; it is quite another to have seen the headless corpses crucified on display in the public square, as the people of Mosul had to.
But what ISIS did to the daily life and the culture of the cities it tortured for three years is perhaps even less well known to the wider world. In ways great and small, ISIS tried not only to kill vast swathes of the people it ruled, but it also wanted to exterminate their culture.
Anyone who has been to a vibrant Middle Eastern city knows that such cities thrive on late-night bull sessions of men (and usually fewer women) drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and shisha in vast, delightful, inexpensive cafes. In a culture that does not generally drink alcohol, these are the preferred vices. But ISIS banned smoking. Smokers could have their fingers broken; tobacco smugglers could be executed.
Mosul’s coffee sellers advertise their brew in the streets by clinking together the small glasses it is served in. This, too, was banned. Why? Because it sounded too much like music, and all music was banned in the Islamic State.
Papal visits are often “historic” in only an arbitrary sense. The first time an important person travels anywhere, it might be described as “historic,” but ultimately proves trivial. Moreover, the pope’s power is largely symbolic. He brought the people of Mosul prayers, not construction crews.
But it is in the almost mysterious nature of the papacy that while the pope commands no divisions, he and the Church are still here, while communism is gone in no small part thanks to Pope John Paul II. It is difficult to discern, but sometimes, popes do change the world.
Iraq is a young country. The median age is just 21. And the crowds were visibly filled with children, particularly in Qaraqosh, a mostly Christian town of about 50,000 that the pope visited after he departed Mosul. For those children, who either endured under ISIS or fled with their parents to the relative safety of the autonomous Kurdistan Region to the east, this is the first major event of their lives that does not involve death and violence.
The town reportedly prepared for the visit for three months. A choir sings alongside musicians in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Iraq’s largest Christian church, which had been torched by ISIS and has now been restored.
“Thank you from the depths of our heart, Holy Father, for this historic visit, which consoles us in our torment,” Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan said. At the church, the pope heard the witness of Doha Sabah Abdallah, a Christian resident of Qaraqosh, whose son and nephew were murdered by ISIS. She has forgiven their killers.
The full diversity of Iraq, especially in the north, was on display during the visit. After a decade and a half of sectarian conflict, the wider world might know Shiite and Sunni, Arab and Kurd, but what about the ancient Eastern Churches? The Chaldeans, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Syriac Orthodox Church, or the lesser-known ethnic groups of Iraq, such as the Shabak, the Turkmen, and the Yazidis? This was the first time I’ve seen that side of Iraq put front and center, as an ancient and extremely diverse country, in anything other than books or historical documentaries.
Even so, it is clear that what remains is a shadow of what once existed. Tens of thousands of Christians and other minorities have fled Iraq entirely in recent years, not to mention refugees from the larger population groups, none of whom have escaped the mass violence. Notable by their absence were Iraqi Jews who were forced to flee, mostly to Israel, decades ago. While a handful are thought to remain in Baghdad, and perhaps a few hundred families in the Kurdistan region, 100 years ago, 20% of Baghdad would have been Jewish. That the federal Iraqi government reportedly did not permit a Jewish delegation to attend the ceremonies despite a request to do so was a missed opportunity.
How, then, to reconcile all of this? How could Iraq put on such a good show for the pope even as the prognosis for healing remains grim? (In an especially petty move, the Mosul municipality stripped out trees that had been planted for the visit once the pope had gone, only to replant them when Moslawis objected.)
These questions brought to mind a description I’ve read, in a wildly different context, of American perceptions about Germany before the First World War. For Americans before the war, there were two Germanys. One was the land of music and philosophy and Goethe. The other was the land of Prussian militarism. For the next 30 years, one Germany devoured the other, culminating in a suicidal attempt to destroy the country entirely. In books such as Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, there is a nostalgia and melancholy as the one Germany consumed the other. Zweig killed himself in Brazil shortly after finishing the book.
That Iraq is also Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, and that Baghdad was the center of the Islamic Golden Age, or that Basra was once the “Venice of the Middle East” (it served as a model for Dubai, though today, Basra’s canals are fetid open-air sewers), has been increasingly difficult to see. If there are two Iraqs, one whose impulses toward sectarian violence produced ISIS and have given immense power to Iran-backed militias, Pope Francis’s visit gave the other Iraq the chance to shine through.
One video in the days before the pope’s arrival shows Omar Qais, a Moslawi sculptor, installing the cross he made by hand on the platform in the church square. He had spent 33 months during the city’s occupation continuing to sculpt in his basement. ISIS had not only banned new sculpture, but it actively destroyed the existing cultural heritage wherever the Islamic State held power. Parts of the cross were made during Qais’s months hiding his work, almost certainly at the risk of his life.
Another was a promo video for a Nineveh orchestra performing in Mosul’s Old City, complete with the instruments distinct to Arab orchestras, such as the oud and the qanun (a kind of lap harp), alongside Western cellos and violins. Some of the men are clean-shaven, none of the women have their faces covered, and they are all wearing black-tie attire. There is virtually no sound or image in the video that would have been possible under ISIS, except for the pock-marked rubble of the ruins that ISIS created around them.
Pope Francis’s homily at Mass in Erbil was delivered from Franso Hariri Stadium, named for the Christian governor of Erbil who was killed in 2001 by an Islamist insurgent group that would later merge with ISIS.
The Gospel reading was apt. John 2:19: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The pope went on:
Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body, and about the Church as well. The Lord promises us that, by the power of the resurrection, he can raise us, and our communities, from the ruins left by injustice, division, and hatred. That is the promise we celebrate in this Eucharist. With the eyes of faith, we recognize the presence of the crucified and risen Lord in our midst.
That he was speaking to an audience that included refugees whose temples have been destroyed and who have seen crucifixions with their own eyes cannot have been lost on anyone.
He concluded:
The Church in Iraq, by God’s grace, is already doing much to proclaim this wonderful wisdom of the cross by spreading Christ’s mercy and forgiveness, particularly towards those in greatest need. Even amid great poverty and difficulty, many of you have generously offered concrete help and solidarity to the poor and suffering. That is one of the reasons that led me to come as a pilgrim in your midst, to thank you and to confirm you in your faith and witness. Today, I can see at first hand that the Church in Iraq is alive, that Christ is alive and at work in this, his holy and faithful people.
The Church in Iraq is alive because Iraq is alive. And the pope bore witness to that.
Andrew Bernard is a former staff writer at the American Interest and a former Middle East security analyst at Control Risks-International SOS.
