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If goodwill could be measured solely by the number of white doves that are let fly in honor of a guest, then there should be heavenly peace between Christians and Muslims in Iraq long ago.
Wherever Pope Francis appeared in the last few days between Mosul and Baghdad, the pigeons were always there, which he should admire or throw up himself.
But one should not be fooled by this heavily used symbolism: the program that Francis has been pursuing for a long time and that is always present on this first trip by a Pope to Iraq is anything but worn and kitschy.
It's a provocation.
For some Christians and Muslims, and at least as much for people without religion.
There is no question that a reconciliation of Islam and Christianity is a goal of global political importance.
On the still extremely long and arduous journey there, the current papal trip to the country where IS raged a few years ago and where the once proud community of Christians has shrunk to a splinter group through persecution and expulsion is an important step forward.
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In truth, however, Francis' vision goes far further.
For him, peace between Islam and Christianity is not the goal, but only an intermediate step: He is convinced that these two religions, together with Judaism, are called upon to make the rest of the world a better and more peaceful place after mutual reconciliation with their common ethical standards do.
This claim is documented in the famous "Document on the Brotherhood of All Men", which Francis signed in February 2019 together with one of the highest authorities of Sunni Islam, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayyeb.
“The main causes of the crisis in the modern world”, it says there, are “a numbed human conscience and an alienation from religious values, as well as the dominance of individualism and materialistic philosophies”, which “divine man and replace both worldly and material values of the highest and most transcendent principles ”.
Visible wounds: Pope Francis reaches the Al-Tahera church in Mosul, which was destroyed in the war against IS
Source: dpa / Andrew Medichini
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In his most recent encyclical “Fratelli tutti” last year, Francis consequently wrote: “As believers we are convinced that without an openness to the Father of all there can be no solid and constant reasons for the call to fraternity.”
This is the basic conviction that Francis made rush into the desert, where he prayed bareheaded and shoulder to shoulder with other aged religious leaders: the Pope not only does not see religions as a threat to world peace.
He considers them to be an imperative for this.
It is the maximum challenge of the secular zeitgeist that could sound absurd or presumptuous.
If it weren't so obvious.