Pope Benedict washes the feet of a priest on Holy Thursday in Rome. (Reuters)

Rome, April 22: In his first question-and-answer television appearance, shown by Italy’s national broadcaster today, Pope Benedict XVI urged the Christian minority not to abandon Iraq and offered his thoughts on euthanasia and the tsunami in Japan.

In a segment recorded last week and broadcast on one of the holiest days in the Christian calendar, the pope, dressed in white and seated behind a desk in his library, responded to questions from seven people selected from among thousands of submissions.

Like the book-length interview the pope published last November, the television appearance seemed aimed at helping him speak more directly with his followers, exactly a year after a sexual abuse crisis in Europe plunged the Roman Catholic world into a tailspin and revealed profound problems of communications at the Vatican.

The pope urged Christians in war-torn Iraq “to resist the temptation to emigrate, which is very understandable in the conditions they are living in”.

The programme revealed a rich tension between the mysteries of faith and the limitations of the television interview format. Asked by an Italian man: “What is Jesus doing in the time between His death and resurrection?” the pope answered: “This descent of Jesus’ soul should not be imagined as a geographical or a spatial trip, from one continent to another. It is the soul’s journey.”

Elena, a 7-year-old tsunami survivor from Japan, asked: “Why do children have to be so sad? I am asking the pope, who speaks with God, to explain it to me?” The pope answered, “This suffering was not empty, it wasn’t in vain, but behind it was a good plan.”