Militia manipulation of Cardinal Sako’s words

Vulgar distortion is not an occasional behaviour in Iraq; it has become the official language of the state’s looters — those who possess nothing but noise, bad faith and the instinct to weaponise words. They lie in wait for any phrase, seize any sentence, twist any meaning and turn it into ammunition against the few remaining voices of integrity.

This is precisely what the ruling parties and militias did with the remarks of Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako, Patriarch of Babylon, a man who has remained a rare model of Iraqi loyalty in a political class dominated by sectarian oligarchs who see Iraq only as spoils.

Cardinal Sako has never ceased to condemn the fragmentation of Iraqis, nor has he ever compromised on his Iraqi identity, which he has always placed above any religious or sectarian affiliation.

A year ago, during the same Christmas Mass, he addressed the political elite directly. Seated before him were Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, the figurehead of the Coordination Framework, and Ammar al-Hakim, a man weighed down by political and familial contradictions.

Sako then declared that Iraq had been hijacked by militias and was trapped in a challenging regional and international environment. He said that the only way out was for the country to rediscover its national identity.

Speaking from the pulpit of St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Baghdad, he reminded his congregation that religious platforms exist for prayer, compassion and mercy, not militarisation or the promotion of chaos. He said that a cleric is a man of God, not a man of the militia. He has a duty to speak out against injustice, but not to become part of a corrupt political system.

Sako called for a return to a unifying Iraqi national identity, full citizenship, genuine reconciliation and a real state — a state of law and justice, not a state of weapons and competing loyalties.

This year, Sako repeated his moral admonition, again addressing Al-Sudani and Al-Hakim. But this time he was blunter: normalisation must begin among Iraqis themselves.

He knew that one million displaced Iraqis had had their homes and land seized by militias and that a similar number were living in permanent exile after their houses had been destroyed.

He said this knowing that entire cities had been emptied of their inhabitants and that powerful figures had seized Iraqi properties under various pretexts.

He said it because he knows that Iraq does not need slogans; it needs life to be normalised.

But the moment the cardinal used the word ‘normalisation’, the propaganda machine sprang into action.

The militias, fully aware that they were the target, rushed to twist the meaning and portray it as ‘normalisation with Israel’.

This was no misunderstanding; it was deliberate malice.

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The goal was clear: to silence a voice that reminds them the devastation endured by Iraqis is not fate, but the direct result of their rule.

The sectarian parties and militias are not enraged by the word ‘normalisation’ itself, but by the existence of an Iraqi cleric who is not like them.

In a country where clerics have become instruments of mobilisation, brokers of loyalty and marketers of sectarian identity, Cardinal Louis Raphaël Sako stands out as an anomaly — a cleric who is Iraqi first and foremost.

Such a model is unacceptable in today’s Iraq.

It is unacceptable because, according to the logic of sectarian power, a cleric must be obedient, not independent; an agent of incitement, not a voice of conscience; someone who blesses weapons, not someone who criticises militarised pulpits; someone who cheers on militias, not someone who reminds us that Iraq does not belong to them.

In a country where national belonging has become a liability and foreign allegiance a virtue, Sako’s loyalty to Iraq is treated as a crime.

Thus, his words had to be distorted, his meaning sabotaged and his call for ‘normalisation among Iraqis’ turned into a ready-made accusation of normalisation with Israel.

The tragic irony is that the parties and militias screaming against ‘normalisation’ are the very forces that cannot control their own political decisions — or even their own weapons.

They speak of Israel because they cannot speak of themselves.

They shout into the void because they cannot confront the truth that Sako articulated: Iraq needs internal reconciliation, not external slogans.

The same militias that accuse others of normalisation normalise corruption, displacement, property theft, turning the state into a pasture for sectarian mythology and cross-border loyalties daily — yet never normalise truth, criticism or a cleric who reminds them that Iraq is not a laboratory for their experiments.

Thus, Sako’s words had to be turned into a fabricated battle.

Militias can only survive on imaginary wars, deriving their legitimacy from inventing a new enemy every day.

Today’s enemy was encapsulated in a single word: ‘normalisation’. This was spoken by a cleric who understands that Iraq must normalise life itself before anything else.

What Sako said was not political rhetoric; it was a moral outcry directed at a political class that has lost all connection to morality.

He was telling them plainly: Return Iraq to itself. Return people to their homes. Return the state to the rule of law. Restore the meaning of politics. But such words do not suit those who have built their power on ruin.

They do not suit those who view Iraq as a sphere of influence rather than a homeland. They do not suit those who fear any voice reminding them that power is not destiny, that militias are not a state and that sectarian identity is not national identity.

And so Cardinal Sako remains a rare, perhaps inconvenient, model.

But he is precisely the model that Iraq needs now more than ever.

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