BAGHDAD, March 13 (AFP) - Iraqi Christians say they will “never forget the joy” of Pope Francis’ historic visit to the country but they don’t expect it to stem the minority’s exodus from the country.
Wajdane Nouri, a Christian in her fifties, will soon join her daughters in the United States.
At St. Joseph Cathedral, where she has long led the choir, huge posters and a red carpet still bear witness to the first ever papal visit to Iraq.
Earlier this month, Francis led a mass in Baghdad, ravaged for 40 years by wars and economic crises, shortly after having prayed in a church that was the scene a decade ago of the bloodiest anti-Christian attack in Iraq.
For Nouri and the estimated 400,000 other Christians left in Iraq, the pope’s words that no one should be treated like a “second class citizen” and against “the plague of corruption” in the country resonated deep.
Those who were reluctant to speak to the media before Francis flew in are today irrepressible.
The pontiff has emboldened them to air their grievances.
But since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 2003 US-led invasion, the Christian community has shrunk from six to just one percent of the predominantly Muslim country’s population.
And only large job creation projects can head off emigrations, warned Father Nadheer Dakko, a priest at Saint Joseph.