Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani met with Pope Francis in a historic meeting in the Iraqi city of Najaf on Saturday.
The meeting, on the second day of the first-ever papal visit to Iraq, marked a landmark moment in modern religious history, AFP reported.
The meeting lasted 50 minutes, with Sistani's office putting out a statement shortly afterwards thanking Francis, 84, for visiting the holy city of Najaf.
Sistani, 90, "affirmed his concern that Christian citizens should live like all Iraqis in peace and security, and with their full constitutional rights," it said.
His office also published an image of the two.
It took months of careful negotiations between Najaf and the Vatican to secure the one-on-one meeting.
"We feel proud of what this visit represents and we thank those who made it possible," said Mohamed Ali Bahr al-Ulum, a senior cleric in Najaf.
Sistani is followed by most of the world's 200 million Shiites -- a minority among Muslims but the majority in Iraq -- and is a national figure for Iraqis.
In 2019, he stood with Iraqi protesters demanding better public services and rejecting external interference in Iraq's domestic affairs.
"Ali Sistani is a religious leader with a high moral authority," said Cardinal Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, the head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and a specialist in Islamic studies.
"The Najaf school has great prestige and is more secular than the more religious Qom school," Ayuso said.
"Najaf places more weight on social affairs," he added.
Earlier, Pope Francis met with President Barham Salih – who had extended the official invitation to the pontiff in 2019.
During his meeting with the Iraqi president, the Pope addressed a number of sensitive issues in Iraq.
“May the weapons be silenced (...). May there be an end to acts of violence and extremism,” he stressed, hoping for dialogue to prevail to give the country peace and development.
Following his visit to the grand ayatollah, the Pope will head to the desert site of the ancient city of Ur -- believed to be the birthplace of the Prophet Abraham, common patriarch of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths -- where he will host an interfaith service, with many of Iraq's other religious minorities in attendance.
