Pope Francis begins this Tuesday in Kinshasa a seven-day visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) and South Sudan, two countries hit by war, famine and natural disasters linked to climate change.
The 40th international trip for Francisco, 86, which is expected to be particularly difficult due to his mobility problems, was scheduled for July of last year, but knee pain caused it to be postponed and, since then, the security situation in the region has become more complicated in both countries.
In recent months, eastern DR Congo has been the scene of an upsurge in violence, especially on the border with Rwanda, an area with a subsoil rich in coltan, essential for the electronic equipment industry, and where there are more than 100 active armed groups, specifically the March 23 Movement (M23), for which reason the visit to Goma, provided for in the initial program, was suspended.
John Paul II was in Goma in 1980 and 1985, when the country was still called Zaire, but the capital of North Kivu province is currently particularly vulnerable to M23 attacks.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, independent from Sudan since 2011, has never been visited by a pontiff.
Francisco’s trip began with his arrival in Kinshasa, which he will travel by car from the airport of the capital to the Palace of the Nation for a ceremony of boas-vindas and meeting with President Felix Tshisekedi, before delivering his first speech in the country.
The leader of the Catholic Church will appeal to dialogue as a vehicle to achieve peace, in a speech that takes as a context the death of more than 200 civilians and the flight of their homes of almost 52,000 people in the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu in the last six weeks, while more than 1.5 million people remain in the region as internally displaced persons.
Half of DR Congo’s population, around 45 million people, is Catholic and the church has enormous influence in the country. Francis will celebrate mass in the area of the Ndolo airport in Kinshasa, where close to a million people are expected.
In the absence of traveling to Goma, the Pope will meet with a group of victims from the east of the country, who will give testimony of what they experienced, at the Kinshasa nunciature, where he will meet with representatives of various Catholic charities.
The Pope will travel on Friday to South Sudan, a country whose gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of 322 dollars (295 euros) places it among the poorest in the world and where the majority of the population survives thanks to international aid. Some 8.3 million South Sudanese, 75% of the population, struggle every day to find enough to eat.
The trip to South Sudan is an unprecedented trip for a pope, traveling with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Church of Scotland moderator Jim Wallace as the country has a large Anglican Church presence. .
In April 2019, the three religious leaders convened a spiritual retreat at the Vatican to help the peace process in South Sudan and during this initiative, in a symbolic gesture of humility, Francis knelt and kissed the feet of the president of South Sudan. South, Salva Kiir. Mayardit and opposition leader Riek Machar, and urged the two warring leaders to go ahead with the peace agreement signed the previous year.
The call to maintain this peace agreement, which has had mixed progress, punctuated by recurring outbreaks of violence, will be the central theme of the Pope’s speech to the South Sudanese authorities at the Juba Presidential Palace.
On Saturday, the Pope will meet with the clergy in the Cathedral of Santa Teresa, and in the afternoon he will meet with almost two million internally displaced people, from whom he will hear various testimonies.
The pontiff will also officiate a mass at the mausoleum of John Karang, former leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), killed in a helicopter crash in 2005, and whose influence was fundamental to the founding of South Sudan.
Source: TSF
