On a visit to the destroyed Iraqi city of Mosul, Pope Francis declared that “fraternity is more durable than fratricide, that hope is more powerful than hatred, that peace more powerful than war.”
The pope on Sunday visited the ruins of four churches in the city devastated by the Islamic State. Many of the Christians who lived in Mosul were forced to leave their homes when ISIS took over large areas of northern Iraq in the summer of 2014.
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He called on Iraqi Christians to return to the country and to help rebuild.
On Saturday the pope met with Iraq’s top Shiite cleric and visited Ur, the birthplace of the biblical Abraham.