Pope arrives in Iraq, where Christians are struggling to hold on

BEIRUT – Pope Francis landed in Baghdad on a breezy afternoon Friday to begin an unprecedented visit to the land revered as the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham and the site of the Garden of Eden. But the Christian community waiting to greet Christendom's most prominent figure is one exhausted by decades of conflict.

Whether as random victims of chaos or targets of organized sectarian violence, Iraqi Christians have suffered the same fates as many of their compatriots. But their numbers — whittled down by emigration from a high of 1.4 million before 2000 to a paltry 250,000 now — point to a community in danger of vanishing altogether.

"We're living on borrowed time," said Emmanuel Khoshaba,