Pope Francis yesterday extended his hand to the world’s Shiite Muslims, meeting top cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in a landmark moment in modern religious history.
The two elderly, respected men of religion met at al-Sistani’s humble home in the shrine city of Najaf early yesterday, the second day of the first-ever papal visit to Iraq.
The 84-year-old pontiff is defying a second wave of COVID-19 cases and renewed security fears to make a “long-awaited” trip to Iraq, aiming to comfort the country’s ancient Christian community and deepen his dialogue with other religions.
Photo: Reuters
He landed at the Al Najaf International Airport, where posters had been set up featuring a famous saying by Ali, the fourth caliph and the Prophet Mohammed’s relative, who is buried in the holy city.
“People are of two kinds, either your brothers in faith or your equals in humanity,” read the banners.
A convoy of vehicles carried him into the city, which was under extremely tight security.
He stepped out in one of Najaf’s tiny alleyways and a journalist saw him cross the threshold into al-Sistani’s office.
No journalists were allowed inside the meeting as the 90-year-old grand ayatollah is highly reclusive and almost never seen in public.
The visit is one of the highlights of the pope’s four-day trip to war-scarred Iraq, where al-Sistani has played a key role in tamping down tensions in recent decades. It took months of careful negotiations between Najaf and the Vatican to secure the one-on-one meeting.
“We feel proud of what this visit represents and we thank those who made it possible,” said Mohamed Ali Bahr al-Ulum, a senior cleric in Najaf.
Pope Francis, a strong proponent of interfaith efforts, has met top Sunni clerics in several Muslim-majority countries, including Bangladesh, Morocco, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
Al-Sistani is followed by most of the world’s 200 million Shiites — a minority among Muslims, but the majority in Iraq — and is a national figure for Iraqis.
“Ali al-Sistani is a religious leader with a high moral authority,” said Cardinal Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, the head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and a specialist in Islamic studies.
Al-Sistani began his religious studies at the age of five, climbing through the ranks of Shiite clergy to grand ayatollah in the 1990s.
While former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was in power, he languished under house arrest for years, but emerged after the US-led invasion toppled the repressive regime in 2003 to play an unprecedented public role.
In 2019, he stood with Iraqi protesters demanding better public services and rejecting external interference in Iraq’s domestic affairs.
On Friday in Baghdad, Pope Francis made a similar plea.
“May partisan interests cease, those outside interests who don’t take into account the local population,” Francis said.
Al-Sistani has had a complicated relationship with his birthplace Iran, where the other main seat of Shiite religious authority lies: Qom.
While Najaf affirms the separation of religion and politics, Qom believes the top cleric — Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — should also govern.
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