He Papa Francisco carried out 2 attacks during his visit to Iraq in March 2021. This was reported by the Italian newspaper “The Corriere della Sera”by publishing a preview of the supreme pontiff’s autobiography – which will be on sale in January -, titled “Hope.”
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In the extract, Jorge Mario Bergoglio – the secular name of Peter’s successor – narrates that he visited the Middle Eastern nation at the time of COVID-19, despite being advised against it “by everyone”, in addition to being warned of the risk by British intelligence services:
“I was notified as soon as we landed in Baghdad the day before. The police had alerted the Vatican Gendarmerie about information received from the English secret services: a woman loaded with explosives, a young suicide bomber, was heading to Mosul to blow herself up. And a van had also left at full speed with the same intention.”
“I needed” to go to Iraq: Pope
According to reports, Francis decided to visit the Asian country because he “needed” to go see Abraham, the common ancestor of Jews, Christians and Muslims, and despite the security warning, the head of Vatican State I continue with the visit.
So he was in Najaf, the holy city of Shiite Islam, and met with Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, to discuss interreligious dialogue; From this meeting the Argentine points out that:
“That meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani had been prepared by the Holy See for decades, without any of my predecessors managing to complete it.”
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In the advance it is read that the Pope was shocked to see the devastation of the war in Mosul, which he described as “a wound in the heart”; It is also reported that, when the religious asked about the fate of the alleged terrorists:
“The commander answered me tersely ‘they are no longer there.’ The Iraqi police had intercepted them and exploded them. This also affected me a lot, this was also a poisoned fruit of the war.”
EAM