The Pope reiterated this Sunday the call for peace in South Sudan, during a mass in Juba, which was attended by some 70,000 people, encouraging political leaders to lay down the weapons of hatred and revenge.
“In the name of Jesus, of his beatitudes, let us lay down the weapons of hatred and revenge,” Pope Francis said, urging political leaders to overcome “the antipathies and aversions that, over time, have become chronic and threaten with opposing tribes. and ethnic groups” and “to put the salt of forgiveness on the wounds, which burns but heals”.
At the mass held next to the John Garang mausoleum, Francis asked people to renounce “once and for all to respond to evil with evil”, even if “the heart bleeds for injustices”.
Pope Francis was received with songs and expressions of joy by the country’s Catholics, who represent about 36% of the population of South Sudan and who are experiencing a serious humanitarian crisis due to war, famine and natural disasters.
On the last day of his pilgrimage to Africa, Francis also asked Catholics to show themselves as “persons capable of creating bonds of friendship, of living fraternity, of building good human relations, of preventing the corruption of evil, the morbidity of divisions, the filth of business prevails and the plague of injustice”.
“Let us accept and love each other with sincerity and generosity, as God loves us,” said the Pope in a message that aims to revive hope in the youngest country in the world, and also one of the poorest.
Accompanied by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Presbyterian head of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields, two confessions with weight in the country, the Pope arrived in South Sudan this Friday, after having visited the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Francis is developing a historic ecumenical pilgrimage to draw world attention to the country’s plight and encourage its peace process.
The purpose of the ecumenical visit is to encourage South Sudanese political leaders to develop a 2018 peace deal that would end a civil war that erupted after the predominantly Christian country won independence from Muslim-majority Sudan, in 2011. .
Upon his arrival on Friday, Francis issued a scathing warning to President Salva Kiir and his former rival and now lawmaker Riek Machar that history will judge them harshly if they continue to delay implementation of the peace deal.
Kiir, for his part, committed the government to resume peace talks -which were suspended last year- with groups that did not sign the 2018 agreement.
On Friday, the head of the Catholic Church granted presidential pardons to 71 inmates at Juba’s central prison in honor of the ecumenical pilgrimage, including 36 on death row, after Francis said capital punishment is inadmissible in all the circumstances.
Source: TSF
