‘Through the wounds of the Risen Christ we can see the evils which afflict humanity with the eyes of hope,” Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday in a message that spoke of how “We may all be tempted by the disbelief of Thomas.” In his comments on Iraq, however, the pope seemed himself to have succumbed to the temptation of disbelief, and the eyes of hope of which he spoke seemed to be squeezed shut, at least in respect of the current war. Said the pontiff: “Nothing positive comes from Iraq, torn apart by continual slaughter as the civil population flees.”

Benedict’s commentary, made to thousands gathered at the Vatican on Easter, is a reminder that while the pope may be infallible in matters of Catholic doctrine, even our greatest figures can falter in the complexities of temporal events. For this is a moment when it’s important to note that much of the news from Iraq is positive, beginning with the ferment of freedom. Our columnist Nibras Kazimi, who participated in the country’s liberation, wrote in these pages recently, “Bringing down Saddam gave Iraq and the Iraqi people a fighting chance at a better life … flawed freedom is far better than slavery in whatever form.”

Our Eli Lake, who is currently en route for another visit to the Iraq theater, reported last week that the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has launched an effort at ethnic cleaning, has not shown his head in Baghdad since February and that Sunni tribal leaders such as Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, far from fleeing, are beginning to band together to fight Al Qaeda. A retired American general, Barry McCaffrey, who visited Iraq recently, reported, “Since the arrival of General David Petraeus in command of Multi-National Force Iraq — the situation on the ground has clearly and measurably improved.” The Johns Hopkins scholar of the Middle East, Fouad Ajami, recently returned from Iraq to tell CNN, “I have a reasonable measure of optimism about what I saw in Baghdad.” Senator McCain wrote yesterday that on his most recent visit to Iraq, his fifth since 2003, it was finally safe enough to drive into Baghdad from the airport rather than taking a helicopter. “The new political-military strategy is beginning to show results,” Mr. McCain wrote.

The security situation in Baghdad has improved enough so that the Iraqi government recently pushed the curfew back to 10 p.m. from 8 p.m. ABC News’s Terry McCarthy reported last week from Baghdad, “Children have come out to play again. Shoppers are back in markets. … Life is slowly coming back to normal.” The Iraqi bloggers Mohammed and Omar Fadhil wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month, “stores that were long shuttered are reopening — including even some liquor stores that came under vicious attacks in the past. This is a sign that extremists no longer can intimidate people and hold the city hostage. All of this gives the sense that law is being imposed.”

They added, “The frequency of attacks has declined drastically, and the terrifying scene of bullet-riddled bodies has become a rarer incident.” Per capita GDP in Iraq, according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund, grew to $1,900 in 2006 from $949 in 2004. We wouldn’t want to make too much of either the anecdotal or the quantitative reporting. A battle is underway in Iraq. But neither would it be logical for anyone to make too little of it. The growth rate the IMF is reporting is astounding. If it happened in any developed country, it would be progress on a revolutionary scale.

***

If the pope wants to help Iraqis and the Americans and others who are risking their lives to help them, he could underscore this progress rather than denying it. Recent years have shown us that popes certainly have the capacity to play a constructive role in world affairs. We refer not only to John Paul II’s heroic struggle against Soviet Communism, but even to the part that Benedict XVI himself apparently played in winning the safe release from Iran of the royal marines. The pope, in citing a list of trouble spots from Zimbabwe to Sri Lanka, avoided in his Easter message the error the American left makes of focusing on the carnage in Iraq to the exclusion of all the other woes.

It is possible, too, that the reference to Iraq was not intended as a criticism of America’s intervention, which after all was four years ago, but on the failures since the invasion of the followers of Sunni and Shiite Islam to live together in peace. At least it can be observed that the pope’s comment comes in from a prelate who has been speaking up for Christianity in Europe, where it is threatened not only by secularism but by an intolerant streak of Islam that also targets Jews.

The danger of Benedict’s negativism about Iraq yesterday is that it will be interpreted in a way that will undermine the West in the war with the very extremist factions he seemed concerned about last year at Regensburg, where he sparked a controversy by quoting the Byzantine emperor Manuel II. Following the controversy the pontiff courageously made a trip to Turkey. Wouldn’t it be something were he, in the wake of his remarks about Iraq, to make a trip to Baghdad and look for himself at the positive things that are happening in Iraq, at the civil population that has chosen to stay and build up the country, and give himself and his billion or more followers a chance to see the situation through eyes of hope.