Pope Francis has called on Iraq’s Christians to forgive the injustices committed against them by Islamic extremists.

The call came as he visited the wrecked shells of churches and met ecstatic crowds in the community’s historic heartland, which was nearly erased by the so-called Islamic State group’s horrific reign.

At each stop in northern Iraq the remnants of its Christian population turned out, jubilant and decked out in colourful dress, though heavy security prevented Francis from plunging into the crowd as he would normally do.

Nonetheless, they seemed simply overjoyed that they had not been forgotten. It was a sign of the desperation for support among an ancient community uncertain whether it can hold on.

Traditionally Christian towns dotting the Nineveh Plains of the north were emptied as Christians – as well as many Muslims – fled the Islamic State group’s onslaught in 2014. Only a few have returned to their homes since the defeat of IS in Iraq, which was declared four years ago, and the rest remain scattered elsewhere in Iraq or abroad.

Bells rang out in the town of Qaraqosh as the Pope arrived. Speaking to a packed Church of the Immaculate Conception, Francis said “forgiveness” is a key word for Christians.

“The road to a full recovery may still be long, but I ask you, please, not to grow discouraged. What is needed is the ability to forgive, but also the courage not to give up.”

The Qaraqosh church has been extensively renovated after being vandalised by IS militants during their takeover of the town, making it a symbol of recovery efforts.

For the Vatican, the continued presence of Christians in Iraq is vital to keeping alive faith communities that have existed there since the time of Christ. The population has dwindled from around 1.5 million before the 2003 US-led invasion that plunged the country into chaos to just a few hundred thousand today.

Francis’s visit to Iraq aimed to encourage them to stay and help rebuild the country and restore what he called its “intricately designed carpet” of faith and ethnic groups.

In striking images earlier on Sunday, Francis, dressed in white, took to a red carpet stage in a square in the north’s main city, Mosul, surrounded by the grey hollowed-out shells of four churches, nearly destroyed in the war to oust the Islamic State group from the city.

It was a scene that would have been unimaginable years earlier. Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, was at the heart of the IS so-called “caliphate” and witnessed the worst of the group’s rule inflicted on Muslims, Christians and others, including beheadings and mass killings.

“How cruel it is that this country, the cradle of civilisation, should have been afflicted by so barbarous a blow,” Francis said, “with ancient places of worship destroyed and many thousands of people – Muslims, Christians, Yazidis – who were cruelly annihilated by terrorism – and others forcibly displaced or killed.”

He deviated from his prepared speech to address the plight of Iraq’s Yazidi minority, which was subjected to mass killings, abductions and sexual slavery at the hands of IS.

“Today, however, we reaffirm our conviction that fraternity is more durable than fratricide, that hope is more powerful than hatred, that peace more powerful than war,” he said.

The square where he spoke is home to four different churches – Syriac Catholic, Armenian-Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox and Chaldean – each left in ruins.

IS inflicted atrocities against all communities, including Muslims, during its three-year rule across much of northern and western Iraq. But the Christian minority was hit especially hard.

The militants forced them to choose among conversion, death or the payment of a special tax for non-Muslims. Thousands fled, leaving behind homes and churches that were destroyed or commandeered by the extremists.

Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, became IS’s bureaucratic and financial backbone. It was from Mosul’s al-Nuri mosque that then-IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi made his only public appearance when he gave a Friday sermon calling on all Muslims to follow him as “caliph”.

It took a ferocious nine-month battle to finally free the city in July 2017, during which between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians were killed, according to an AP investigation at the time. Al-Baghdadi was killed in a US raid in Syria in 2019.

The war left a swath of destruction across Mosul and the north, and many Iraqis have been left on their own to rebuild amid a long financial crisis.

The Rev Raed Kallo was among the few Christians who returned to Mosul after IS was defeated.

“My Muslim brothers received me after the liberation of the city with great hospitality and love,” he said on stage before the pontiff.

Before IS, he had a parish of 500 Christian families. Most emigrated abroad, and now only 70 families remain, he said. “But today I live among two million Muslims who call me their Father Raed,” he said.

Gutayba Aagha, the Muslim head of the Independent Social and Cultural Council for the Families of Mosul, encouraged other Christians to return.

“In the name of the council I invite all our Christian brothers to return to this, their city, their properties and their businesses,” he said.

Throughout his four-day visit, Francis has delivered a message of inter-religious tolerance and fraternity to Muslim leaders, including in an historic meeting on Saturday with Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

At Qaraqosh, Francis urged its residents to continue to dream, and forgive.

“Forgiveness is necessary to remain in love, to remain Christian,” he said.

Public health experts had expressed concerns ahead of the trip that large gatherings could serve as super-spreader events for coronavirus in a country suffering from a worsening outbreak where few have been vaccinated.

Later, thousands of people filled a sports stadium in the northern city of Irbil for Francis’ final event in his visit to Iraq: an open-air mass featuring a statue of the Virgin Mary that was restored after Islamic militants chopped of the head and hands.

The statue was transported from the church in Keramlis, a Christian village on the Nineveh Plains, to a place of honour on the altar for Sunday’s mass.

Keramlis, an ancient Assyrian town less than 18 miles from Mosul, fell to IS in August 2014, two months after the extremists took Mosul and its surrounding areas, sending most inhabitants fleeing. In Keramlis, they destroyed the interior of St Adday church and decapitated the statue of the Madonna.

Read more: Pope says it is wrong to identify Islam with violence

Iraqi Christians celebrated Christmas on Tuesday amid improved security, more than a year after the country declared victory over Islamic State militants.

In northeast Mosul, people attended a mass on Monday (December 24) at the Grand Immaculate Church, surrounded by blackened walls still tagged with Islamic State graffiti. Dozens of worshippers prayed and received communion, and then gathered around the traditional bonfire in the church’s courtyard.

The militants had ravaged Christian areas, looting and burning down homes and churches, stripping them of all valuable artefacts and smashing relics.

Faced with a choice to convert, pay a tax or die, many Christians in the Nineveh Plains, chose to flee. Most sought refuge in nearby towns and cities, but many sought permanent asylum abroad.

In Baghdad, at the St. George Chaldean Church, Christians turned out in force to attend a mass on Tuesday (December 25).

Key Shiite and Sunni clerics were also present at the mass.

It was from a Mosul mosque that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a “caliphate” in 2014, spanning northern Iraq and eastern Syria.

The militants seized vast swaths of territory in north and west of Iraq in June 2014. But U.S-backed Iraqi forces recaptured the areas and declared final victory against ISIS in 2017.

Iraq’s Christian population has shrunk from 1.5 million to about 400,000 since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

Pope Francis paid tribute on Monday to Middle East Christians who have clung to their faith during persecution by Islamist militants, saying there are more Christians martyrs now than in the Church’s early days.

The pope spoke to thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his holiday blessing on the feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr.

He mentioned the persecution of Christians in Iraq, many of whom where able to spend their first Christmas since 2013 in churches after towns and cities were retaken from Islamic State.

“This was an example of fidelity to the Gospel,” he said. “Despite trials and dangers, they courageously show that they belong to Christ,” he said.

“Today, we want to think of them and be close to them with our affection, our prayers and even our tears,” the pope said.

Christians in northern regions of Iraq held by Islamic State were given an ultimatum: pay a tax, convert to Islam, or die by the sword. Most of them fled to the autonomous Kurdish region to the east.

Leaders of various churches, including the Coptic Church in Egypt, whose members have been beheaded and churches bombed, have called the fact that Christians of all denominations were being killed in the Middle East an “ecumenism (unity) of blood.”

“There are more Christian martyrs today than in the first centuries,” said the pope, who has often denounced Islamic State and condemned the concept of killing in God’s name.