POPE Francis has called for an end to militant violence on the first papal visit to Iraq, and said peacemakers should be given a chance.
After arriving in Baghdad under tight security the Pope headed to the country’s presidential palace.
“May the clash of arms be silenced … may there be an end to acts of violence and extremism,” he said, addressing Iraqi President Barham Salih, politicians and diplomats.
Later Francis met with priests, bishops and others at Our Lady of Salvation Cathedral in Baghdad.
In 2010 the cathedral came under assault when attackers used a combination of grenades, bullets and suicide vests to to kill at least 58 people.
Earlier Francis told reporters on his plane that he felt duty-bound to make the historic trip to Iraq because the country “has been martyred for so many years”.
War has taken a heavy toll. Iraq has only 250,000 Christians, compared to 1.4 million two decades ago.
After the US-led invasion in 2003, many Christians have fled abroad to escape the violence that has plagued the country.
Iraq is deploying thousands of additional security personnel to protect Pope Francis after a spate of rocket and suicide bomb attacks raised fears for his safety.
Earlier, the pope said he was “happy to making trips again” having earlier vowed not to “let down [the Iraqi people] for a second time” after Pope John Paul II cancelled plans for an Iraq trip in 1999 when talks with then-president Saddam Hussein’s government broke down.
In an area known as the cradle of civilization, the modern history of Mesopotamia — now present-day Iraq — has been scarred by lasting hardship: three decades of despotic rule, followed by nearly two decades of war and a wave of carnage unleashed by the Islamic State.
Pope Francis’s whirlwind tour will take him by plane, helicopter and possibly armoured car to four cities.
They include areas that most foreign dignitaries are unable to reach, especially in such a short space of time.
He will meet Iraq’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric — 90-year-old Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani — in the southern city of Najaf.
Francis will travel north to Mosul is a former Islamic State stronghold, where churches and other buildings there still bear the scars of conflict.
The pontiff will also visit Ur, birthplace of the prophet Abraham, who is revered by Christians, Muslims and Jews.
The meeting with Sistani, who wields great influence over Iraq’s Shi’ite majority and in the country’s politics, will be the first by a Pope.
