Pope Francis, Ayatollah Sistani Highlight in Historic Meeting Role of Religious Leaderships to End Peoples’ Tragedies

By Staff, Agencies

Pope Francis held a historic meeting with Iraq’s top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Husseini al-Sistani on Saturday, in a powerful appeal for coexistence in a land torn by sectarianism and violence.

After the meeting, Sayyed al-Sistani office released a statement that said religious authorities have a role in protecting Iraq’s Christians and that the Shia leader “affirmed his concern that Christian citizens should live like all Iraqis in peace and security, and with their full constitutional rights.”

The office said the talks, which lasted around 50 minutes, had emphasized on peace.

The office added that the meeting touched upon injustice, oppression and poverty people are suffering from all around the world, not to mention wars, economic blockade and displacement.

The meeting also shed light on the Palestinian people’s suffering in the ‘Israeli’-occupied territories.

Sayyed Sistani’s office, additionally, stated that the top cleric pointed to the role religious leaderships should have in putting an end to the world’s tragedies, calling on all concerned parties, namely the major powers, to weigh mind in this respect.

Ayatollah Sistani also stressed the importance of joining efforts to stabilize the values of harmony, peaceful coexistence, and humanitarian solidarity, without forgetting to hail the role of the religious leadership in protecting people of Iraq from terrorism.

Meanwhile, the Vatican said Francis thanked Sistani and the Shia people for having “raised his voice in defense of the weakest and most persecuted” during some of the most violent times in Iraq’s recent history.

The pontiff also said that Sayyed Sistani’s message of peace affirmed “the sacredness of human life and the importance of the unity of the Iraqi people.”

Francis’s meeting in the holy southern city of Najaf, during a whirlwind and risky tour of Iraq, marked the first time a pope has met with such a senior Shia cleric.

After his closed-door meeting with Sistani, Francis headed to the ruins of ancient Ur in southern Iraq, revered as the birthplace of Abraham, father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He is scheduled to give a speech at an interreligious meeting.

The meeting took place at Sayyed Sistani’s humble home which he has rented for decades, located along a narrow alleyway in Najaf.

Ayatollah Sistani wields enormous influence over politics. His edicts sent Iraqis to free polls for the first time in 2005, rallied hundreds of thousands of men to fight against Daesh [the Arabic acronym for terrorist ‘ISIS/ISIL’ group] in 2014 and toppled an Iraqi government under pressure from mass demonstrations in 2019.

Francis said he was making the trip to show solidarity with Iraq’s devastated Christian community of around 300,000, just one fifth of the number before the US invasion in 2003 and the terrorist violence that followed.