It’s no secret that Pope Francis is one of the world’s most recognizable figures, which means he is surrounded by round-the-clock security.
Pope Francis recently revealed how close he came to being assassinated — on multiple occasions — by radical Islamc terrorists in the Middle East.
Both incidents nobody knew about until today.
In his upcoming memoir, Pope Francis said he was the target of two assassination attempts during his 2021 visit to Iraq.
According to The BBC, British intelligence was able to prevent a double-suicide bomb attack from striking the head of the Catholic church.
The full book, titled “Hope: The Autobiography,” will be released during the Vatican’s holy year, Jubilee 2025, and will be the first memoir published by a sitting pope.
Excerpts from the book detailing the attempts on his life were first published in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera yesterday.
“The [Iraqi] police had alerted the Vatican Gendarmerie to a report from British intelligence: a woman packed with explosives, a young suicide bomber, was on her way to Mosul to blow herself up during the papal visit,” Pope Francis revealed in the memoir, according to The Telegraph. “And a van had also left at full speed with the same intent.”
The Iraq trip marked the first time a pontiff had ever visited the country, and was wrought with security concerns.
Iraq is the site of many biblically significant locations, but Christians have historically faced persecution and displacement in the Islamic-majority country.
In the book, Francis expressed sorrow upon learning of the deaths of the failed assassins.
“The Iraqi police had intercepted them and blown them up…This too was the poisoned fruit of war,” he wrote.
Francis is not the first pope to survive an assassination attempt in the Middle East. Pope John Paul II was shot twice in 1981 by a Turkish gunman.
Francis was elected during the papal conclave in 2013, becoming the first pope from the Americas, according to the United States Conference of Catholic bishops.
The pope has recently suffered multiple health scares, including a heart attack and subsequent respiratory infection that required him to be hospitalized.