Pope Francis survived two assassination attempts in 2021. Here's what we know

Pope Francis has revealed that there were two assassination attempts on his life.

Francis, who turns 88 today (17 December), revealed the details of the attack in his autobiography.

The attempts were made during Francis’ landmark trip to Iraq in 2021 – the first ever visit to that country by a Pope.

But what do we know about the assassination attempts?

Let’s take a closer look:

What happened?

As per CNN, the revelation about the attacks came in Francis’ autobiography Hope.

An extract of the book was published by Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera.

The attempts occurred during Francis’ trip to Iraq in March 2021

As per The Telegraph, Francis said he was warned about the visit to Iraq in March 2021 due to a high level of risk.

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Francis said this was because the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing and attacks from possible Islamic State militants in Mosul.

Francis, however, said he was resolute about the trip going forward.

Francis said British security agencies warned him that a young woman was headed to Mosul to blow herself up.

Francis was also told a van “had also left at high speed with the same intention."

“When I asked the (Vatican) Gendarmerie the following day what was known about the two bombers, the commander replied laconically, ‘They are no longer there,’” Francis wrote.

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“The Iraqi police had intercepted them, and detonated them. That, too, was very striking to me. This, too, was the poisoned fruit of war.”

Francis’ trip

As per The Telegraph, Francis visited six Iraqi cities in three days.

At the time he said he was “a pilgrim of peace.”

Francis also met Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani – Iraq’s top Shiite cleric in the holy shrine city of Najaf.

The meeting, which came on the second day of the first-ever papal visit to Iraq, marked a landmark moment in modern religious history and a milestone in Francis’s efforts to deepen dialogue with other religions.

Francis later addressed the rich spectrum of Iraq’s religious communities at Ur, the traditional birthplace of the Prophet Abraham, a central figure in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths, where he made an impassioned plea for “unity” after conflict.

Francis, speaking at the ruins of a church, urged Iraq’s Christians to forgive trespasses against them by extremists.

Around 10,000 Iraqi police were deployed at the time for Francis’ protection.

Curfews were also imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19.

The book, originally planned to be published after Francis’ death, is coming out at the start of the Vatican’s big Holy Year, which Francis will officially inaugurate on Christmas Eve.

According to Italian publisher Mondadori, “Hope” is the first autobiography ever published by a pope. Francis, however, has published other first-person, memoir-style books or book-length interviews with biographers and journalists, including “Life: My Story Through History,” published earlier this year.

Francis in September racked up 32,814 kilometers by air during his visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore.

His trip far surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and notching one of the longest papal trips ever, both in terms of days on the road and distances traveled.

This despite that Francis is in a wheelchair, has lost part of his lung to a respiratory infection as a young man and had to cancel his last foreign trip at the last minute (to Dubai in November to participate in the UN climate conference) on doctors’ orders.

With inputs from agencies