Pope Francis ended his historic visit to Iraq. The pope boarded a plane for Rome on Monday morning. He was given a farewell ceremony at the Baghdad airport, and was accompanied down a red carpet to his flight by Iraqi President Barham Salih.
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He said as he left the country that Iraq would “always remain with me, in my heart.”
On Sunday the pope met with the father of Alan Kurdi, the boy who drowned when a smuggling boat heading to Europe capsized off the coast of Turkey in 2015. His body washed up on a Turkish beach six years ago, a powerful image of the devastation being wreaked by the Syrian civil war.