The Pope of the Word,pop Francis,faces

Salwa Hanna has summed up all the love in her comment on lines that were written in tribute to His Holiness Pope Francis who has bid farewell to Iraq today. She said: “I miss Baghdad. I wish the Pope would take me with him”. The yearning of the child in us never slumbers. Lebanon’s media tried to soothe some of the yearning of Salwa and her peers who are scattered over the earth. We saw cities in Iraq and people of another religion welcome this octogenarian elder who has come to them, waddling in his walk. From Matthew’s Gospel, the Pope took a word to Iraq that men are all brethren, and from the book of Revelation, he took a handkerchief to wipe the tears that overflowed like the Tigris and Euphrates, and a prophetic wrath on the world, the hatred of which has displaced, in a few years, more than a million Iraqis who were persecuted like their Christ. Is the world still listening? This is another tribute, from Salwa and myself, to the Pope of the Word.