British intelligence helped foil an assassination plot on Pope Francis, he has written in his autobiography.
According to excerpts from his upcoming autobiography, two suicide bombers planned to attack him during his 2021 visit to Iraq, but were killed before striking.
They were foiled after British intelligence tipped off Iraqi police, according to excerpts from Hope: The Autobiography published in Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Tuesday.
"A woman packed with explosives, a young kamikaze, was heading to Mosul to blow herself up during the papal visit," wrote the pontiff.
"And a van had also set off at full speed with the same intent."
The pope said he asked a security official the next day what had happened to the would-be bombers.
"The commander replied laconically: 'They are no more'," he wrote. "The Iraqi police had intercepted them and blown them up."
Pope Francis’ trip three years ago was the first by a Catholic pontiff to the country and probably the riskiest foreign trip of his 11-year papacy.
Francis' visit to Mosul was a key moment during his Iraq trip as Iraq's second-largest city had been under the control of Islamic State from 2014 to 2017.
The pope visited the ruins of four destroyed churches there and launched an appeal for peace.
During the trip, the Vatican provided few details about the security preparations for the pope.
Many of the events during his visit, which took place as the Covid pandemic was first easing, were open only to a limited number of people.
The book, originally planned to be published after Francis' death, is coming out in 80 countries in January, and is co-written with Italian author Carlo Musso.
According to Italian publisher Mondadori, Hope is the first autobiography published by a pope.
Francis has published other first-person, memoir-style books and book-length interviews with biographers and journalists, including Life: My Story Through History, published earlier this year
