For Iraqi Christians, Pope Francis' visit was a rare moment of hope

BAGHDAD (AP) — The death of Pope Francis has sent shockwaves through Iraq’s Christian community, where his presence once brought hope after one of the darkest chapters in the country’s recent history.

His 2021 visit to Iraq, the first ever by a pope, came after years of conflict and displacement. Just a few years before that, many Iraqi Christians had fled their homes as Islamic State militants swept across the country.

Christian communities in Iraq, once numbering over a million, had already been reduced to a fraction of their former number by decades of conflict and mass emigration.

In Mosul, the site of some of the fiercest battles between Iraqi security forces and the Islamic State, Chaldean Archbishop Najeeb Moussa Michaeel recalled the pope’s visit to the battle-scarred city at a time when many visitors were still afraid to come as a moment of joy, “like a wedding for the people of Mosul."

“He broke this barrier and stood firm in the devastated city of Mosul, proclaiming a message of love, brotherhood, and peaceful coexistence,” Michaeel said.

As Francis delivered a speech in the city’s al-Midan area, which had been almost completely reduced to rubble, the archbishop said, he saw tears falling from the pope’s eyes.

Sa’dullah Rassam, who was among the Christians who fled from Mosul in 2014 in the face of the IS offensive, was also crying as he watched the pope leave the church in Midan that day.

Rassam had spent years displaced in Irbil, the seat of northern Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdish region, but was among the first Christians to return to Mosul, where he lives in a small house next to the church that Francis had visited.

As the pope's convoy was leaving the church, Rassam stood outside watching, tears streaming down his face. Suddenly the car stopped, and Francis got out to greet him.

“It was the best day of my life,” Rassam said. The pope's visit “made us feel loved and heard, and it helped heal our wounds after everything that happened here," he said.

The visit also helped to spur a drive to rebuild the city’s destroyed sites, including both Muslim and Christian places of worship.

“After the wide international media coverage of his visit, many parties began to invest again in the city. Today, Mosul is beginning to rise again,” Michaeel said. “You can see our heritage reappear in the sculptures, the churches and the streets.”

Chaldean Patriarch Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako told The Associated Press that Francis had built strong relationships with the Eastern rite churches — which are often forgotten by their Latin rite counterparts — and with Muslim communities.

The patriarch recalled urging Francis early in his papacy to highlight the importance of Muslim-Christian coexistence.

After the pope’s inaugural speech, in which he thanked representatives of the Jewish community for their presence, Sako said, “I asked him, ‘Why didn’t you mention Muslims?’... He said, ‘Tomorrow I will speak about Muslims,’ and indeed he did issue a statement the next day."

Francis went on to take “concrete steps to strengthen relationships” between Christians and Muslims through visits to Muslim-majority countries — including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Jordan as well as Iraq — Sako said. “He brought Muslims and Christians together around shared values.”

His three-day visit to Iraq “changed Iraq’s face — it opened Iraq to the outside world,” Sako said, while “the people loved him for his simplicity and sincerity.”

The patriarch said that three months before the pope’s death, he had given him a gift of dates from Iraq, and Francis responded that he “would never forget Iraq and that it was in his heart and in his prayers.”

During his visit to Iraq, Francis held a historic meeting with the country's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, at the latter’s home in Najaf.

Sistani’s office in a statement Monday expressed “deep sorrow” at the pope’s death, saying he was “greatly respected by all for his distinguished role in serving the causes of peace and tolerance, and for expressing solidarity with the oppressed and persecuted across the globe.”

The meeting between the two religious leaders had helped to “promote a culture of peaceful coexistence, reject violence and hatred, and uphold values of harmony based on safeguarding rights and mutual respect among followers of different religions and intellectual traditions,” it said.

In Irbil, Marvel Rassam recalled joining the crowds who packed into a stadium to catch a glimpse of the pope.

The visit brought a sense of unity, Rassam said, “as everyone attended to see him, and not only the Catholics.”

“He was our favorite pope, not only because he was the first to visit Iraq, but he was also very special and unique for his humility and inclusivity,” he said.

At St. Joseph Chaldean Cathedral in Baghdad, where Francis led a Mass during his 2021 visit, church pastor Nadhir Dako said the pope's visit had carried special weight because it came at a time when Christians in Iraq were still processing the trauma of the IS attacks.

“We, the Christians, were in very difficult situation. There was frustration due to the forcible migration and the killing that occurred," Dako said. "The visit by the pope created a sort of determination for all Iraqis to support their Christian brothers.”

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Martany reported from Irbil, Iraq.

FILE.- Pope Francis arrives at a meeting with the Qaraqosh community at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, in Qaraqosh, Iraq, Sunday, March 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini,File)

FILE.- Women wait outside the Chaldean Cathedral of Saint Joseph, in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, March 6, 2021, where Pope Francis, depicted on a giant poster at their back, is concelebrating a mass. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini,File)

FILE - Pope Francis is welcomed as he arrives at Irbil airport, Iraq, March 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, file)

FILE.- Iraqi security forces deploy in Mosul, northern Iraq, once the de-facto capital of IS, where Pope Francis will pray for the victims of war at Hosh al-Bieaa Church Square, Sunday, March 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini,File)

FILE.- Pope Francis stands with religious leaders during an interreligious meeting near the archaeological area of the Sumerian city-state of Ur, 20 kilometers south-west of Nasiriyah, Iraq, Saturday, March 6, 2021.(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini,File)

FILE.- Pope Francis waves as he arrives for an open air Mass at a stadium in Irbil, Iraq, Sunday, March 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban,File)

FILE - Pope Francis waves as he arrives for an open air Mass at a stadium in Irbil, Iraq, March 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, file)

Louis Sako, patriarch of Iraq's Chaldean Catholic Church, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, April 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

FILE.- Iraqi Christians say goodbye to Pope Francis after an open air Mass at a stadium in Irbil, Iraq, Sunday, March 7, 2021. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban,File)

FILE.- Pope Francis, surrounded by shells of destroyed churches, listens to Mosul and Aqra Archbishop Najib Mikhael Moussa during a gathering to pray for the victims of war at Hosh al-Bieaa Church Square, in Mosul, Iraq, once the de-facto capital of IS, Sunday, March 7, 2021.(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini,FIle)

SEATTLE (AP) — Inside a Virginia courthouse, three immigration agents in plainclothes — one masked — detained a man who had just had misdemeanor assault charges dismissed. They declined to show identification or a warrant to the man, and one threatened to prosecute horrified witnesses who tried to intervene, cellphone video shows.

In North Carolina, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed it arrested four people at a county courthouse, according to local media reports, prompting the sheriff to express concerns about a lack of communication from the agency as well as about disruption to court proceedings.

Inside a courthouse in New Hampshire, a pair of agents tackled a Venezuelan man outside an elevator, flattening an older man with a cane in the process. And in Boston, an ICE agent detained a man who was on trial. A municipal court judge held the agent in contempt over the arrest, but the order was later overturned by a federal judge.

The flurry of immigration enforcement at courthouses around the country in the past month — already heavily criticized by judicial officials and lawyers — has renewed a legal battle from President Donald Trump's first term as advocates fear people might avoid coming to court.

It's drawing further attention with last Friday's arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan in Wisconsin. The FBI arrested Dugan on charges that she tried to help a defendant evade waiting federal agents by letting him leave her courtroom through a jury door.

“Some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law and they are not, and we’re sending a very strong message today,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said during an appearance on Fox News after the arrest.

Lena Graber, senior staff attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, told The Associated Press that she’s aware of at least a dozen recent immigration arrests at courthouses around the country.

“The historical context is really important,” Graber said. “This is something that was not part of ICE’s practice until the first Trump administration, and people were shocked.”

ICE long had a general practice of not arresting people at certain locations, including schools, hospitals, courthouses and churches. But during the first Trump administration, the agency adopted a policy explicitly allowing courthouse arrests of “specific, targeted aliens,” arguing that it was especially important in “sanctuary” jurisdictions where officials do not notify the agency before releasing immigrants facing deportation cases.

Courthouse immigration arrests jumped, drawing condemnation from judicial officials and legal organizations, as well as lawsuits from some states and the adoption of bills seeking to block the practice.

Dugan’s case is similar to one brought during the first Trump administration against a Massachusetts judge who was accused of helping a man sneak out a back door of a courthouse to evade a waiting immigration officer. A judge in Oregon faced similar allegations — though not an arrest or criminal charges -- in 2017.

The chief justices of some states, including California and Washington, asked ICE to stop, saying fear of arrest would keep crime victims and witnesses from showing up in court. In one well-publicized case, agents in Texas arrested a woman while she was obtaining a protection order against an alleged abuser.

The Biden administration imposed restrictions on courthouse immigration arrests, but they were quickly undone when Trump returned to office this year.

Under guidance issued Jan. 21, ICE officials are allowed to carry out immigration enforcement in or near courthouses if they believe someone they’re trying to find will be there. Whenever possible, the agents are supposed to make arrests in nonpublic areas, to coordinate with courthouse security and to avoid disrupting court operations.

Teodoro Dominguez Rodriguez, identified by ICE as a Honduran national, was confronted and arrested by immigration enforcement officers after he left a Charlottesville courtroom April 22. It was the second immigration arrest at the court that day.

The first wasn’t recorded, but as word spread, Nick Reppucci, who heads the public defender’s office there, scrambled staff to the courthouse. They captured Dominguez Rodriguez’s arrest on camera.

The three agents, one in a balaclava-style ski mask, ignored demands from observers to show badges or a warrant, the video shows. One agent threatened to have the U.S. attorney’s office prosecute two women who tried to place themselves between the agents and Dominguez Rodriguez.

Sherriff Chan Bryant confirmed that the agents had shown badges and paperwork to a bailiff beforehand. But Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley criticized the officers for failing to identify themselves while making the arrest.

“Bystanders, or the person being arrested, might have violently resisted what on its face appeared to be an unlawful assault and abduction,” Hingeley said in an emailed statement.

Reppucci decried the “normalization happening here, where federal law enforcement are at this point grabbing people without being required to show that person any form of identification.”

In a written statement, ICE stood behind the actions of the officers, “who are trained to assess and prosecute apprehensions in a manner that best ensures operational success and public safety.”

The Associated Press was unable to locate relatives who might speak on Dominguez Rodriguez’s behalf, and it was not clear if he had an attorney representing him.

Repucci stressed the impact arrests like Dominguez Rodriguez's could have on people coming to court, a place he said is supposed to be where “disputes are resolved in an orderly, peaceful manner.”

“People in divorce proceedings, people with civil disputes, custody hearings, potential witnesses, all are going to be less likely to come to court,” he said.

Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report. Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.

FILE - People gather to demonstrate the arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, outside the Federal courthouse in Milwaukee, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Devi Shastri, File)

FILE - A sign is posted outside of county Judge Hannah Dugan's courtroom at the Milwaukee County courthouse, April 25, 2025, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Andy Manis, File)