On Thursday morning, August 26, 2021, Pope Francis received in audience — in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace –, Iraqi Nadia Murad, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate in 2018. Four years before, she was made a slave of the Islamic State and suffered the murder of many of her family members. She met the Holy Father in December of 2018, and gave him her autobiographical book “The Last Girl.”
The Pope In Iraq: Sign of Hope
In an interview with the Vatican media, Nadia Murad spoke of the fruits that the Pontiff’s visit to Iraq would have, and she appealed to the International Community to work for the liberation of numerous Yazidi women, who continue to be in the hands of the Jihadists.
She also said that “Pope Francis’ visit to Iraq is not only historic in itself but comes in a historic moment for the Iraqi people, which is rebuilding itself after the genocide, the religious persecution and decades of conflict. The Holy Father’s visit illumined the potential of peace and religious liberty. She symbolized that all Iraqis, regardless of their faith are equally deserving of dignity and human rights.”
Murad also said that in her audience with Pope Francis in 2018, they spoke in-depth “on the experience of the genocide of the Yazidi community, in particular the violence that women and children endure.” In this connection, she expressed her happiness that her “story stayed with him and that he felt called to take this message to Iraq.” His defense of the Yazidi causes, she added, “is an example for all other religious leaders to spread the message of tolerance of religious minorities, such as the Yazidis.”
Nadia Murad
As the Encyclopaedia Britannica states on its Website, Nadia Murad, whose artistic name is Nadia Murad Basee Taha, was born in 1993 in Kawju (Kocho), Iraq. She is a human rights activist who was kidnapped by the Islamic State in the country in August of 2014 and sold as a sex slave. She escaped three months later and, after doing so, she began to talk about human trafficking and sexual violence, especially against Yazidi women.
Murad also talked about the mistreatment of the Yazidi community in general. In 2016 she was appointed a goodwill Ambassadress of the United Nations for the dignity of the survivors of human trafficking and received several awards. In 2018 she was a joint recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize together with Congolese Doctor Denis Mukwege.
Translation by Virginia M. Forrester
