ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – President Masoud Barzani on Wednesday was received by Pope Leo XIV during an official visit to the Vatican, discussing important regional and global issues and wishing for peace.

“His Holiness Pope Leo XIV warmly welcomed President Barzani, and both expressed their pleasure at the meeting as an opportunity to exchange views on important issues in the region and the world,” Barzani’s office said in a statement.

The Kurdish leader was accompanied by Ano Abdoka, a Chaldean Catholic and the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) transport and communications minister.

During the meeting, both “wished that peace and stability would prevail in the world and that an end would be brought to the suffering and misery of people,” the statement said.

Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Region’s ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), traveled to the Vatican at the invitation of the pontiff.

Christians in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region have undergone mass violence and displacement since 2003, with sectarian attacks reaching a peak in 2014 as the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group swept through swathes of the country.

Attacks by ISIS particularly targeted Christians in their ancestral hometowns in the Nineveh Plains, forcing them to flee. While many fled abroad, a large number sought refuge in the Kurdistan Region, which became a sanctuary for different faiths and ethnicities in a country otherwise ravaged by sectarianism.

Less than 300,000 Christians remain in Iraq, down from 1.5 million before the 2003 American invasion, according to official data obtained by The New Region from Bashar Matti Warda, the Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil. The actual number, however, is expected to be much lower.

Iraq has one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Syriac, an ancient dialect of Aramaic - believed to have been the language spoken by Jesus - is still used as a liturgical language by the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East.

The Pope and President Barzani also discussed the latest developments in Syria, with the Kurdish leader briefing the pontiff on the escalations between the Syrian transitional government and Kurdish-led forces in northern Syria, The New Region's correspondent on the ground said.

Both sides stressed that practical steps should be taken toward peace amid the recent hostilities.

President Barzani previously visited the Vatican in 2014 and met with the late Pope Francis.