pope's visit in drc

The World Has Forgotten About the Conflict in South Sudan. Enter Pope Francis

T here was much optimism on the streets of Juda when South Sudan became the world’s newest country in 2011. But the euphoria was short-lived, as the African country descended into civil war and famine. Now, Pope Francis is trying to raise global attention for South Sudan as he begins a three-day trip Friday to the country as part of a “pilgrimage of peace.”

The Pope’s trip, alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshield, is centered around raising awareness about a conflict that has left over 400,000 people dead .

The majority Christian South Sudan broke away from majority Muslim Sudan in 2011, but slipped into civil war two years later. The South Sudanese conflict began with an internal political dispute between President Salva Kiir and then-Vice President Riek Machar, which ballooned into a wider ethnic battle between the former’s Dinka community and the latter’s Nuer ethnic group.

The trip is not the first time Pope Francis has sought to urge peace. In 2019, during a meeting in the Vatican, Francis knelt and kissed the feet of Kiir and Machar. The Pope had been planning to visit South Sudan for years but was delayed by security concerns.

Below, what to know about the Pope’s trip to South Sudan, and his three-day trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo that preceded it.

Why is the Pope in South Sudan?

After a successful visit to the DRC, the pope arrived in Juda, South Sudan, to celebratory crowds. The nation, barely 12 years old, has never welcomed a Western leader on a public visit.

The “three wise men”—as some call Francis, Welby, and Greenshield—were greeted by tens of thousands of people singing and ululating to celebrate the occasion.

Approximately 6 million of South Sudan’s 11 million people are Catholic. In the colonial era, Christian missionaries in Sudan were divided by the Nile river, with Catholics and Anglicans made to preach on opposing sides, according to the New York Times .

Francis was reunited with Kiir, a former rebel who has led the nation since its 2011 independence, and his deputy-turned-rival Machar.

But deadly clashes between cattle herders and militia a day before Pope Francis’ arrival were a reminder of the ongoing conflict. 27 people reportedly died, including five children. Writing on Twitter , Welby called the killings “a story too often heard across South Sudan.”

The country also faces a number of other issues. There are currently over 2.2 million internally displaced people in South Sudan and 2.3 million people have fled the country, according to U.N. statistics. Last year, the country was also found to be the most corrupt in the world by Transparency International .

The country faces a number of investigative reports that show how oil revenue worth billions of dollars have disappeared and officials cannot account for the wealth, according to the New York Times.

While the Pope’s visit wont correct these rife issues, it has promoted global conversations by bringing these two nations back in the spotlight.

Why did the Pope visit the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

The Democratic Republic of Congo , like South Sudan, has also been grappling with conflict. More than 120 rebel groups have been locked in a conflict with the government for three decades.

The Catholic Church has been a counterweight to the state in DRC. In 2019, clerics who monitored the election that year said the result that saw current President Felix Tshisekedi take office was manipulated.

The country declared a public holiday in anticipation of the rare papal visit—a first in almost four decades. Huge crowds gathered in the capital, Kinshasa, to watch Pope Francis deliver an open-air mass. Around half of the nation’s citizens observe Catholicism, making it Africa’s largest Catholic community.

During his speech, Francis condemned the history of European colonialism and exploitation of Africa’s resources. Minerals play a key role in the ongoing fighting today.

The Vatican’s envoy to the DRC said the Pope’s trip aimed to remind the world not to ignore decades-long conflicts. He was met with applause when he said: “Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa, it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered.”

The nation has also been rife with over 100 armed groups fighting for territorial control or using it as a base to attack neighboring countries such as Angola, Rwanda, and Uganda, Al Jazeera reported .

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What to expect during Pope Francis’ visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan

Pope Francis will make his fourth journey to Africa on Jan. 31 to visit the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, two conflict-ridden countries, to plead for peace in both lands and an end to the poverty in which so many people live. Hopes are high among the people there that Francis’ visit may kick-start the struggling peace processes in both countries.

The journey will be Francis’ 40th since his election as pope in March 2013, and once again is visiting countries that get little coverage in the world’s media but have endured tremendous violence and human suffering. He feels African countries, notwithstanding their gains in political independence, continue to be exploited for their mineral wealth, and he wants to draw the world’s attention to this injustice.

This visit was rescheduled from July 2021, after the pope’s doctors advised against it due to his health. Francis is able to walk with the aid of a walking stick, but he is likely to rely on a wheelchair, and be lifted onto the planes. The new itinerary has been tailored to enable Francis to cope with the various physical challenges involved. The pope’s travels will be confined to the capital cities of both countries—Kinshasa and Juba—in each of which he will celebrate one open air Mass, participate in some public events and have many meetings at the nunciatures (the Vatican’s embassy).

Democratic Republic of Congo

The 86-year-old Argentinian pontiff will depart from Rome airport for the Democratic Republic of Congo on the morning of Jan. 31, accompanied by three Vatican cardinals—Pietro Parolin, secretary of State, Luis Antonio Tagle, prefect of the dicastery for evangelization, Kurt Koch, prefect of the dicastery for promoting Christian Unity. He also will be joined by two Vatican archbishops: Edgar Peña Parra, the substitute in the secretariat of state (chief of staff) and Paul Gallagher, secretary for relations with states (foreign minister). In addition to his security detail and medical personnel, some 70 media operators from many countries, including America’s Vatican correspondent, will travel with him. He is the second pope to visit the country. John Paul II came here twice, in 1980 and 1985.

Pope Francis will arrive at Kinshasa’s international airport at 3 p.m. (local time). He will be welcomed by the prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde Kyenge, who was born in Paris, and by Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, O.F.M. Cap., the archbishop of Kinshasa, and Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, the Italian born nuncio to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Francis will drive in the popemobile from the airport to Kinshasa, the capital city situated on the Congo River with a population of over 10 million people (15.6 million in the metropolitan area), where he will reside throughout his visit.

On arrival in the city, he will go directly to the Palais de la Nation, the presidential residence, where he will be given a state welcome by President Felix Tshisekedi Tshilombo, who previously has visited the Vatican. After a private conversation, the two leaders will address an audience of 1000 people representing the nation’s political and religious authorities, civil society and the foreign diplomatic corps.

The motto for Francis’ visit is “Tous réconcilié en Jésus Christ” (All reconciled in Jesus Christ), and reconciliation is badly needed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country roughly the size of Western Europe whose population of over 100 million is made up of 200 ethnic groups. The country is endowed with exceptional natural resources, including minerals such as cobalt, coltan, copper, hydropower potential, significant arable land, immense biodiversity, and the world’s second-largest rainforest. Despite the prevalence of these resources, 64 percent of its population live on less than $2.15 per day .

The first of Francis’ seven talks in the Democratic Republic of Congo will be to the nation’s authorities, and he is expected to call for an end to the violence that has caused millions of deaths in the past two decades, with 6 million alone between 1998-2008. Even today armed groups in the eastern DRC continue fighting for control of the rare minerals and land, and rape continues to be a weapon of war. Francis itinerary for July 2021 included a visit to Goma in the east of the country, but the visit was not included this time due to security concerns.

Francis is likely to underline the vital need for good governance, an end to corruption, care of the environment, the building of security and peace, especially on behalf of the many people now living in poverty, including 5.6 million internally displaced people living in camps. After giving his speech, Francis will drive to the Vatican’s nunciature where he will reside for the duration of his stay, which concludes Feb. 3.

The motto for Francis’ visit is “Tous réconcilié en Jésus Christ” (All reconciled in Jesus Christ).

On Feb. 1, Pope Francis will drive 5 miles to N’Dolo Airport, Kinshasa’s secondary airport, to preside at an open-air, Zaire-style , Roman rite Mass that is expected to be attended by 1.5 million people. It will be his only public Mass in this the most Catholic country of Africa where, according to Vatican statistics, 50 percent of the population are Catholic, 20 percent are Protestant, 10 percent are Muslim and 10 percent are Kimbanguisti.

At the nunciature that afternoon, Francis will meet victims of violence from the conflict-ridden eastern part of the country and hear their testimonies. Later, he will meet with representatives of the charitable and humanitarian organizations that are working in the country to provide essential health care, education and various kinds of humanitarian assistance to a sizable part of the population. Among them will be Caritas (including Catholic Relief Service), Jesuit Refugee Service, the Sant’ Egidio Community and the Focolare movement.

On the morning of Feb. 2, his third day in Kinshasa, Francis will drive to the Stadium of the Martyrs (named for the four leaders who were hanged for their opposition to the dictator Mobutu in 1966), where he will watch a festive event of dance and song. There, he will speak to tens of thousands of young people and catechists from all over the country. It is an important moment, as 65 percent of the population is under the age of 25—two thirds are younger than 15—and they can be a powerful force for peace. Catechists’ too are a vital force for the church in this country, numbering over 76,000. Francis will then return to the nunciature for a meeting with the country’s prime minister.

In the afternoon, Pope Francis will drive three and a half miles to the Our Lady of the Congo Cathedral, which was built in 1947 and is inspired by the Art Deco architecture of the 1930s, when the country was under Belgian colonial rule. There, in a liturgical ceremony, he will pray with and address priests, deacons, consecrated women and men, and seminarians. The Democratic Republic of Congo has 12,152 priests, 4 deacons, over 12,000 consecrated men and women and 3000 seminarians.

That evening, he will meet with the country’s Jesuit community at the nunciature.

On the morning of Feb. 3, Pope Francis will meet the bishops who govern the country’s 48 dioceses. He will meet them at the headquarters of the national bishops’ conference before driving to the airport, where the country’s president will bid him farewell as he takes the plane for the 3 hour and 20 minute flight to South Sudan, which shares a border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

South Sudan

Francis is the first pope to come to South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, and the 60th country he will have visited as pope.

South Sudan has an estimated population of 13 million, more than 2 millions of whom are internally displaced, and another 330,000 refugees mostly from neighboring Sudan. There are two main ethnic groups: the Dinka (36 percent of the population) and the Nuer (16 percent). According to Vatican statistics, Catholics count for 52 percent of the population, 33 percent are followers of traditional religion, and 6 percent are Muslim.

Although South Sudan has significant oil deposits and much arable land, today most of the population live in poverty and experience food insecurity caused by lack of proper government, communal and inter-ethnic fighting, and vast flooding.

Pope Francis is coming on an ecumenical visit for peace, the motto of which is, “I pray that all may be one.” On his arrival at Juba International Airport at 3 p.m local time, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Iain Greenshields, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and Archbishop Hubertus van Megen, the nuncio, will board the plane to greet him.

When he disembarks from the plane, South Sudan’s President, Salva Kiir Mayardit, will give him an official state welcome. After that, they will all drive to the presidential palace in Juba, the capital city situated on the banks of the White Nile with a population of just over half a million people. After a private conversation with the president, Francis will greet the country’s vice presidents before going to the palace gardens to address an audience of 250 people representing the country’s political and religious authorities, civil society and the diplomatic corps.

Although South Sudan has significant oil deposits and much arable land, today most of the population live in poverty.

In the first of his five talks in this country that has continued to suffer from conflict and violence ever since it became an independent state in 2011, Francis is expected to remind the political leaders of the commitment they gave in Rome, in April 2019, to work together to implement the 2018 peace agreement. He then kissed their feet, begging them to do so. He cannot do that now due to his mobility problems, but his presence in a wheelchair will itself be a powerful message to spur them to work for the common good, not particular group interests.

After this encounter, he will retire to the nunciature where he will reside during his stay in Juba.

On Feb. 5, Francis will drive to the nearby Cathedral of St. Teresa to meet and address the bishops of South Sudan and Sudan (which form one episcopal conference), and representatives of South Sudan’s 300 priests, 7 deacons, 250 consecrated women and men, and 189 seminarians.

Afterwards, he will greet and talk with members of the Jesuit community at the nunciature.

In the afternoon, Pope Francis, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland will meet with approximately 2,000 of the country’s internally displaced people at Freedom Hall. They will hear testimonies from three of them. The archbishop and the moderator will recite prayers, and the pope will give a talk.

When that meeting ends, the ecumenical leaders will go to the nearby John Garang Mausoleum. John Garang is recognized as the father of the nation; he led the liberation movement of the Sudanese people from 1983 to 2005 when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that led to the independence of South Sudan was signed. Soon after, however, he died in a helicopter accident and is buried in a tomb in the mausoleum. President Salva Kiir proclaimed the country’s independence here on his tomb on July 9, 2011.

The ecumenical prayer for peace will take place beside the Mausoleum. It will be opened by the president of the South Sudan Council of Churches. After Gospel readings, the archbishop will speak, the moderator will introduce the liturgy, and Pope Francis will deliver an important speech that is expected to implore the country’s political leaders to give their all for peace. The three religious leaders will conclude the service by imparting their blessing together.

On Feb, 5, Pope Francis will celebrate an open-air Mass near the mausoleum, which hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend. After Mass, he will travel to the airport where President Kiir will bid him farewell before he takes the plane back to Rome, together with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland. The three religious leaders are expected to give a joint press conference during the 6 hour and 45 minute return flight. The plane is scheduled to touch down at Rome airport at 5:15 p.m. local time.

Gerard O’Connell is America ’s Vatican correspondent and author of The Election of Pope Francis: An Inside Story of the Conclave That Changed History . He has been covering the Vatican since 1985.

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In Photos: Pope Francis Visits Africa

After spending time in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pope Francis traveled to the newest country in the world, South Sudan.

Pope Francis at the St. Therese Cathedral in Juba, South Sudan, on Saturday. Credit... Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

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By The New York Times

• Published Jan. 31, 2023 Updated Feb. 4, 2023

Pope Francis spent his last full day in South Sudan meeting with displaced people who had been uprooted from their homes and cultures by war, ethnic strife and natural disaster.

“I am with here you, and I suffer for you and with you,” Francis said at Freedom Hall in Juba, the capital, to hundreds of people who, like millions of South Sudanese, lived what he called the “common and collective experience” of those in sprawling camps for displaced people.

The pope arrived in the country on Friday for an unprecedented joint “pilgrimage of peace” with his Anglican and Scottish Presbyterian counterparts, the last leg of his six-day visit to Africa.

Francis, alongside the symbolic head of the Anglican Communion, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the leader of the Church of Scotland, the Rev. Dr. Iain Greenshields, were the first Western leaders to make a public visit to South Sudan. The country, the newest in the world, is predominantly Christian. It has been engulfed by civil war, famine and now floods.

The leaders’ visit is an effort to bring global attention to the suffering of the South Sudanese people, whose country has been mired in chaos since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011. Years of civil war followed the break, killing at least 400,000 people and displacing millions, despite a peace agreement signed by the president, Salva Kiir, and the opposition leader, Riek Machar.

“No more bloodshed, no more conflicts, no more violence and mutual recriminations about who is responsible for it, no more leaving your people athirst for peace,” Francis said Friday at the Presidential Palace in the capital, Juba, where he met with the president and other officials. “No more destruction: It is time to build! Leave the time of war behind and let a time of peace dawn!”

Francis’ words on Friday were not the first time he has tried to foster a peace agreement in South Sudan, which was has been plagued by its leaders’ violent disagreements. During a spiritual retreat at the Vatican in 2019, the pope kissed the shoes of the leaders of South Sudan’s government and its opposition, and implored them to maintain peace. His gesture failed to heal divisions.

Earlier this week, Francis used similar words in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where his African visit began. Before the enormous and jubilant crowds that had awaited the first pontiff to land in the country since 1985, Francis called for peace from the “forgotten genocide” perpetrated by the warring groups that ravage especially through the country’s east, killing and displacing millions of residents.

He also urged everyone, including the victims of such gruesome violence, to forgive, saying that it would allow the nation to heal.

Children in Juba waiting to welcome Pope Francis.

People along the road in Juba hoping to catch a glimpse of Pope Francis as he drove to the cathedral.

Pope Francis with the leader of the Church of Scotland, Iain Greenshields, left, and the archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, right, at an ecumenical prayer service at the Dr. John Garang Mausoleum in Juba.

An emotional moment during the ecumenical prayer service in Juba on Saturday.

Celebrating during the ecumenical prayer service at the mausoleum for Dr. John Garang, a South Sudanese politician and leader who helped lead the fight for independence.

Pope Francis after arriving on Friday in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

Crowds gathered outside the airport in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, to welcome Pope Francis.

A photograph released by the Vatican showed Francis inspecting the guard of honor after his arrival at the Juba International Airport.

Crowds gathered to welcome the pope, who is in South Sudan after traveling from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Security was tight.

But crowds expressed their excitement for the pope, who was accompanied by other Christian leaders.

From center left, Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury; the pope; President Salva Kiir of South Sudan, and Iain Greenshields, the head of the Church of Scotland, at the Presidential Palace in Juba.

The pope will stay in South Sudan until Sunday.

Crowds cheered as Pope Francis was driven through Martyrs Stadium in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, on Thursday.

The congregation at the Notre Dame Du Congo Cathedral in Kinshasa.

Pope Francis attended a prayer meeting with priests, deacons, consecrated people and seminarians at the cathedral.

An attendee waving the flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo at a gathering of young Catholics and teachers at Martyrs Stadium in Kinshasa.

Tens of thousands of young Catholics came to the stadium to hear the pope speak.

Pope Francis watching a performance at the event.

The pontiff arriving at Martyrs Stadium.

The event on Thursday was held for the pope to meet with Congo’s young Catholics.

A view from the stadium as the crowds began to gather.

Large crowds outside the stadium in the morning.

Pope Francis blessing victims of conflict from the eastern part of Congo, at the diplomatic mission in Kinshasa, the capital.

Presidential guards resting under a canopy after the Mass at N’Dolo Airport.

Worshipers at the airport.

A photo released by the Vatican showed the pope celebrating Mass in front of a large crowd.

Worshipers receiving communion from a member of the clergy.

Choir girls preparing for the Mass at the airport.

Standing on top of an old airplane to get a better view of the service.

A choir practicing before the Mass.

A photograph released by the Vatican showing a meeting with representatives of charities at the diplomatic mission of the Holy See in Kinshasa.

Trying to get a glimpse of the pope as he left N’djili International Airport in Kinshasa.

Francis delivering an address at the presidential palace.

Pope Francis and President Felix Tshisekedi of Congo at a welcome ceremony.

Honor guards preparing for a welcome ceremony at the presidential palace.

As much as Congo embodies the wounds that Francis hopes to heal, it is also a country with potentially great influence on the church’s future.

The pope greeting the crowds in Kinshasa.

Large crowds lining the streets of Kinshasa on Tuesday to welcome Francis as he began his trip through the capital.

Scouts playing drums before the pope arrived at the airport in Kinshasa.

A photo released by the Vatican showed the crowds in Kinshasa.

Francis arriving on Tuesday in Kinshasa.

Catholic priests waiting at the airport in Kinshasa to greet the pope.

Pope Francis on board a plane from Italy to Congo, the starting point of his trip to Africa.

An earlier version of the capsule summary with this article referred incorrectly to the pope’s previous trip to the region. It was his first trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo in four decades, not his first trip to Africa in that time span.

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Pope Francis in DR Congo: A million celebrate Kinshasa Mass

Pope Francis has celebrated one of his biggest Masses, with around a million attendees in Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, estimates say.

Huge crowds started to gather in Kinshasa well before dawn, including scores of schoolgirls dressed in white who danced along the Pope's route.

A public holiday was declared, so as many people as possible could attend.

Around half of DR Congo's population is Catholic - the largest Catholic community in Africa.

It is more than 37 years since a pope has visited the mineral-rich but conflict-ridden country.

Pope Francis was greeted by jubilant scenes at at N'dolo airport: "My joy is too huge that I think I am going to cry," Christella Bola told the Reuters news agency.

A 700-person choir, that had been practising together long before the pontiff was originally due to visit last July, had been assembled specifically for the event. The Pope's original visit had to be postponed because of poor health.

There had been some murmurings that the Pope has not been as critical of DR Congo's political leadership as some had hoped, but the Mass was a joyful event, and the pontiff did have a strong message of peace for those engaging in conflict in the country.

Warring sides should forgive one another and grant their opponents a "great amnesty of the heart", he said.

He went on to espouse the benefits of cleansing one's heart of "anger and remorse, of every trace of resentment and hostility".

Mattieu Nzuzi, one of those in the crowd said he hoped the pontiff's visit would usher an end to the violence in the east of the country, near the border with Rwanda: "I hope that the visit here of the Pope to the Congo will bring peace to our country because over there, near Rwanda, the people are suffering," he said.

However, the second day of his visit coincides with a continuation of fighting between the Congolese army and rebels.

Wednesday's Mass was tipped to be one of Pope Francis' largest-ever Masses, second only to one held in the Philippines in 2015, according to Christopher Lamb, the Rome correspondent of the Catholic magazine The Tablet.

In an interview with the BBC's Newsday radio programme, he said Catholicism was growing in Africa: "This is the future of the church and the growth of the Catholic Church in Africa really is so important to the future of Catholicism."

On Tuesday, the Pope met President Félix Tshisekedi and delivered a speech condemning historical exploitation of Africa's resources, which he described as "economic colonialism".

• Africa Live: The latest updates from around the continent
• Hands off Africa, Pope says on visit to DR Congo
• Why Africa is the future for the Catholic Church

He also addressed DR Congo's plight, as minerals have played a key role in more than three decades of armed conflict there: "Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa, it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered."

However, a planned visit to the eastern city of Goma has been cancelled for security reasons. The eastern part of DR Congo is facing escalating violence as security services fight against armed militia groups.

According to the United Nations, some six million people have been forced to flee their homes in DR Congo.

That is one of the largest populations of displaced people in the world, alongside places like Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and Ukraine.

Most of the displaced are in the eastern provinces of South Kivu, North Kivu and Ituri.

Read more about the conflict in DR Congo:

• Why Kenya's army is joining the DR Congo conflict
• Hiding on top of a hill to escape the rebels
• Key facts and figures about DR Congo
• Is DR Congo too rich for its own good?

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• The Inventory

What the Pope's visit to the DRC and South Sudan means

Pope Francis is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in his second day in a mission that aims to bring peace in the eastern part of the country where thousands have been killed recently in an ongoing conflict.

This is the first papal visit in the country since 1985 , and schools were closed on Feb. 1 after the government announced it would be a public holiday to allow faithful to attend a holy mass at Ndolo airport. Over 40% of DRC’s 95.6 million population are Catholics.

The last papal visit to Africa was a 2019 seven-day tour of three African countries: Mozambique, Madagascar, and Mauritius.

‘Stop exploiting Africa’

In his first day in Kinshasa on Jan.31, Pope Francis denounced acts by foreign mining companies that have been profiteering while exploiting the country’s natural mineral resources, leaving millions of people in abject poverty, oftentimes causing armed conflict .

“Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa. It is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered,” he said . “It is a tragedy that these lands, and more generally the whole African continent, continue[s] to endure various forms of exploitation.”

He decried the long-lasting economic colonialism and conflict in the country, which he said the international community had for the most part become resigned to. “May violence and hatred no longer find room in the heart or on the lips of anyone, since these are inhuman and unchristian sentiments that arrest development and bring us back to a gloomy past,” the pontiff said .

Pope Francis met with president Felix Tshisekedi, who thanked him for “praying fervently for peace in the eastern region of our nation,” but lamented that it has been three decades of bloodshed in the DRC where civilian security has “been undermined by enemies of peace and terrorist groups, especially from neighboring countries.” Rwanda has been blamed for fanning the war and backing M23 rebels .

On the same day, over 122,000 people, including 65,000 children, were reported to have fled their homes over the course of one day after escalation of the conflict in North Kivu province. “These attacks on civilians need to be investigated,” Amavi Akpamagbo, c ountry d irector of Save the Children in DRC told Quartz.

The P ope also met and paid homage to the victims of the civil strife in Kinshasa.

Despite his initial itinerary including a visit to Goma, and Ituri in the North Kivu province, which are the epicenters of the conflict, the pope changed his itinerary preferring to not put the public expected to gather for his visit, in danger from the armed militia in the region.

He is, however, expected to receive a delegation of emissaries from the region, delivering an appeal for his intervention in the conflict. Just two days before his visit, armed militia carried out a massacre in the region that left at least 15 people dead.

DRC’s LGBTQ community has been hurting

The country’s LGBTQ community, which has been facing violence and excommunication , will also be looking upon the pontiff to proclaim a message of support. Pope Francis said in an interview with the Associated Press on Jan. 26 that “being homosexual isn’t a crime,” and that “we are all children of God, and God loves us as we are.”

After his visit to the country with the highest Catholic population in the continent on Feb.2, Pope Francis will take a three-and-a-half hour flight from Kinshasa to Juba, the capital of the world’s newest state South Sudan. He will be the first pope to visit the oil-rich country.

Pope Francis’ South Sudan trip

Having previously postponed the tour of Africa earlier intended for July 2022, due to ill health, this visit is expected to serve as a push for peace in yet another country that continues to languish in poverty despite possessing numerous mineral and natural resources.

Like in the DRC, thousands of lives have been lost and millions displaced in recent years in South Sudan due to civil unrest, especially in Upper Nile , Jonglei, and Unity states, 12 years after its secession from the larger Sudan.

A civil war pitting President Salva Kiir’s government forces and the opposition Sudan’s People Liberation Army (SPLA) has dampened the country’s hopes for economic development.

The fighting has largely been seen as a political struggle between factions allied to president Kiir’s Dinka ethnic group and supporters of the country’s first vice president, Riek Machar, mostly from the Nuer ethnicity. At the center of it are the vast oil reserves that South Sudan has.

There have also been human rights abuses and the curtailing of press freedom. Six journalists are currently behind bars over footage of the president wetting himself at an official event.

The security situation in the DRC and South Sudan has denied them millions of dollars in foreign investment, holding the countries back from achieving economic freedom.

While Pope Francis’ visit to both countries is by no means expected to be the silver bullet that will silence the guns, it is a critical step in pushing for a peaceful coexistence. But even with such peace efforts, African countries remain less secure than they were a decade ago.

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Watch: Pope Francis makes first papal visit to DRC in 37 years

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Watch as Pope Francis arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a three-day stay in the capital Kinshasa.

This week marks the first papal visit to the Central African nation since 1985.

Up to half of the Congo’s population of 80 million are members of the Catholic Church , which has considerable influence in the political and social spheres, helping drive democratic change in recent decades.

Following his arrival, Francis is scheduled to meet president Felix Tshisekedi, officials, diplomats and civil society representatives at the Palais de la Nation.

He is due to move on to visit South Sudan on Friday.

The six-day trip was originally planned for July 2022 but was postponed after the Pope suffered problems with his knee.

It will be his 40th abroad since he was elected the head of the Catholic Church in 2013 and his fifth visit to Africa.

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The Pope's visit to the DRC will bring a new breath of air to the Congolese people.

Stanislas Kambashi, SJ - Vatican City.

Speaking after Pope Francis’ address to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Holy See, His Excellency Deogratias Ndagano Mangokube told Vatican News that Pope Francis' visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo from January 31 will be "a revival and a new breath of air in the life of the Congolese," he said.

New beginnings for peace

The Congolese diplomat first expressed his appreciation to Pope Francis for his constant closeness to the suffering Congolese people who have endured years of armed conflict perpetuated by armed gangs, especially in the eastern region of the country.

The Pope, in his annual keynote discourse to the diplomats, "addressed some of the ills that plague the world while wishing that this new year would be a year of innovation for peace in this world where division and wars seem to multiply," said the ambassador.

I will, at last, be able to go to the DRC

The words that touched the Congolese ambassador the most in the Pope's address were: "I will, at last, be able to go to the DRC ..." When the Pope said those words, Ambassador Ndagano felt particularly moved.

"The expectations of the Congolese people are enormous. Their joy is immense. Pope Francis' arrival in Congo is being prepared for in every locality of the country, not only at the level of the Church or in the capital city, but literally, everyone in the country is preparing for this visit," said the Congolese envoy.

The DRC yearns for peace and he hopes that this Apostolic visit will encourage all those who work for peace in the country with energy to do even more, said the Congolese ambassador. He reassured that the meeting of the Pope with victims of the armed conflicts in the eastern region of the country has been taken care of and would constitute one of the highlights of the Pope's visit to the DRC. The Pope will meet the victims in Kinshasa.

A pilgrimage and plea for peace

Pope Francis re-echoed his concern for the armed conflicts in the eastern part of Congo.

"As you know, at the end of the month, I will, at last, be able to go as a pilgrim of peace to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the hope that violence will cease in the east of the country, and that the path of dialogue and the will to work for security and the common good will prevail. My pilgrimage will continue in South Sudan, where I will be accompanied by the Archbishop of Canterbury and by the General Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Together we desire to unite ourselves to the plea for peace by the country's people and thus contribute to the process of national reconciliation," said Pope Francis when addressing the Holy See's diplomats.

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Pope Francis’ visit to Africa comes at a defining moment for the Catholic church

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During his planned visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan in February 2023, Pope Francis intends to be in dialogue with African Catholics – but also to listen to political leaders and young Africans.

This visit comes at a defining moment in what is regarded as a fairly progressive papacy.

Pope Francis has convened a worldwide consultation on the future of the Catholic church. This consultation, called a synodal process , began in 2021 and will conclude in 2024.

It is the most ambitious dialogue ever undertaken on bringing changes in Catholic beliefs and practices since the Second Vatican Council’s reforms in 1965 . It is exciting for reform-minded Catholics, but distressing for conservative Catholics.

The ongoing synodal process has exposed the fault lines in modern Catholicism on the issues of women, celibacy, sexuality, marriage, clericalism and hierarchism. How Pope Francis – who marks a decade of his papacy this year – manages these increasingly divisive issues will, in my judgement, largely define his legacy.

My research has focused on how African Catholics can bring about a consensus approach in managing these contested issues.

The big questions for me are how another papal visit to Africa at this point will address the challenges and opportunities that Africans are identifying through the synodal process – and how this plays into the state of Catholicism in Africa.

The influence of African Catholicism

The Catholic church is witnessing its fastest growth in Africa (recent statistics show 2.1% growth between 2019 and 2020). Out of a global population of 1.36 billion Catholics , 236 million are African (20% of the total).

African Catholics are not simply growing in number. They are reinventing and reinterpreting Christianity. They are infusing it with new language and spiritual vibrancy through unique ways of worshipping God.

Given its expansion, the Catholic church in Africa is well placed to be a central driver of social, political and spiritual life. In many settings, the church provides a community of hope where the fabric of society is weak because of war, humanitarian disasters and disease.

The DRC, for instance, has the highest number of Catholic health facilities in Africa at 2,185 . It is followed by Kenya with 1,092 and Nigeria with 524 facilities. Additionally, bishops have mobilised peaceful protests against violence in the DRC and Nigeria .

Another major feature of Catholicism on the continent is that it is witnessing a “youth bulge”. Central to Pope Francis’ advocacy for Africa is his appeal that churches, religious groups and governments show solidarity with young people. He calls them “the church of now”.

The pope expressed this most recently in November 2022 during a synodal consultation with African youth. He denounced the exploitation of Africa by external forces and its destruction by wars, ideologies of violence and policies that rob young people of their future.

Why DRC and South Sudan?

Pope Francis comes to Africa as part of the synodal consultation. He takes the message of a humble and merciful church to some of the most challenging parts of Africa: the DRC and South Sudan .

These two countries illustrate the impact of neo-liberal capitalism and the effects of slavery, colonialism and imperialism. Together, they have unleashed the most destructive economic, social and political upheaval in modern African history.

Read more: Conflict in the DRC: 5 articles that explain what's gone wrong

Pope Francis is coming to listen especially to the poor, to young people and to women who have been violated in conflicts. He also hopes to address the hidden wounds of clerical sexual abuse in the church.

Pope Francis will see how war, dictatorship and ecological disasters have denied ordinary people access to land, labour and lodging. These are the “three Ls” he proposes as vital in giving agency to the poor.

Some opposition

Pope Francis will no doubt receive a warm welcome during his visit. Most African Catholics embrace his message of a poor and merciful church because it speaks to their challenges.

But there are many African Catholics, particularly high-ranking church leaders, who are yet to embrace this reform agenda. The previous two popes encouraged a centralising tendency, which promoted unquestioning loyalty to Rome by African bishops. As a result, these bishops resisted attempts by African theologians to modernise and Africanise Catholic beliefs and practices to meet local needs and circumstances.

This has led to some African bishops being uncomfortable with Pope Francis’ progressive agenda on liberation theology, openness to gay Catholics, condemnation of clerical privilege and power, and inclusion of women in mainstream leadership.

Rather than being a strong church that looks like Africa, some of the Catholic dioceses on the continent have embraced medieval traditions – like Roman rituals and Latin – that alienate ordinary African Catholics, especially young people.

Africa’s future role

Pope Francis has often spoken of giving Africa a voice in the church and in the world.

Many African Catholics wonder how this will happen when, for the first time in more than 30 years, there is just one African holding an important executive function at the Vatican. This is Archbishop Protase Rugambwa of Tanzania, the secretary of the Dicastery for the Evangelization of Peoples , a department at the Vatican’s central offices.

Many African Catholics hope that Pope Francis will announce some African appointments to the Vatican during his February 2023 visit.

They also are hoping he will create a pontifical commission for Africa, similar to the Latin American commission created in 1958. This will be a significant way of giving African Catholics a voice in the church of Rome.

Pope Francis hasn’t fully recovered from the health challenges that led to the cancellation of the trip last July. But he is making this trip because he believes that Africa matters.

Through the sessions that the pope will conduct with Africans, especially young people, it’s hoped that the Catholic church in Africa can help address the causes of war and suffering in the DRC and South Sudan, and the obstacles to reforming the church in Africa.

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Map: What countries has Pope Francis visited?

Pope Francis’ trip to the DRC is the first papal visit since John Paul II travelled there in 1985.

Pope Francis is visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Sudan this week.

The 86-year-old leader of the Catholic church will start his trip on Tuesday in the Congolese capital Kinshasa before heading to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on Friday.

Keep reading

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The Vatican’s envoy to the DRC, where Catholics make up about half of the population, has said the trip will remind the world not to ignore decades-long conflicts there.

An estimated 5.7 million people are internally displaced in the DRC and 26 million face severe hunger, largely because of the impact of armed conflict by multiple rebel groups, according to the United Nations.

The trip will be Francis’s 40th abroad since he was elected supreme pontiff in 2013 following the resignation of his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI . Over the course of these trips, the pope has visited 59 countries.

Pope Francis’ trip to the DRC is the first visit by a pope since John Paul II travelled there in 1985 – it was still known as Zaire at the time.

The DRC is the second-largest country in Africa and has a population of some 90 million people. The Church runs about 40 percent of the country’s health facilities and about 6 million children are taught in Catholic schools.

The countries the pope has visited include:

• Brazil: July 2013
• Bolivia: July 2015
• Ecuador: July 2015
• Paraguay: July 2015
• United States: September 2015
• Cuba: September 2015, February 2016
• Mexico: February 2016
• Colombia: September 2017
• Chile: January 2018
• Peru: January 2018
• Panama: January 2019
• Canada: July 2022

• South Korea: August 2014
• Sri Lanka: January 2015
• Philippines: January 2015
• Armenia: June 2016
• Georgia: September 2016
• Azerbaijan: October 2016
• Myanmar: November 2017
• Bangladesh: November 2017
• Thailand: November 2019
• Japan: November 2019
• Kazakhstan: September 2022

• Kenya: November 2015
• Uganda: November 2015
• Central African Republic: November 2015
• Egypt: April 2017
• Morocco: March 2019
• Mozambique: September 2019
• Madagascar: September 2019
• Mauritius: September 2019
• Democratic Republic of Congo: January 2023
• South Sudan: February 2023 (planned)

• Albania: September 2014
• France: November 2014
• Turkey: November 2014
• Bosnia and Herzegovina: June 2015
• Greece: April 2016
• Poland: July 2016
• Sweden: October 2016
• Portugal: May 2017
• Switzerland: June 2018
• Ireland: August 2018
• Estonia: September 2018
• Latvia: September 2018
• Lithuania: September 2018
• Bulgaria: May 2019
• North Macedonia: May 2019
• Romania: May 2019
• Hungary: September 2021
• Slovakia: September 2021
• Cyprus: December 2021
• Greece: December 2021
• Malta: April 2022

Middle East

• Israel: May 2014
• Jordan: May 2014
• Palestine: May 2014
• United Arab Emirates: February 2019
• Iraq: March 2019
• Bahrain: November 2022

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Follow our news, recent searches, pope francis to set off on historic 12-day visit to asia pacific, including singapore and indonesia, advertisement.

All eyes will be on how Pope Francis uses the trip and his role to push the needle on thorny issues, including ongoing wars and crises.

Pope Francis delivers his blessing as he recites the Angelus noon prayer from the window of his studio overlooking St.Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Sunday, Sept. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

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VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis is set to embark on his longest trip since becoming head of the Catholic Church in 2013.

He will leave the Vatican City on Monday (Sep 2) to visit four countries in the Asia Pacific over 12 days.

The 87-year-old will visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste and Singapore , with the entire trip involving about 43 hours of flight time and a distance of 32,000km.

It will also be his longest trip in terms of days spent away from the Vatican.

Bronchitis and joint pain have slowed Pope Francis down in recent years and caused him to postpone some trips and meetings. This upcoming tour – his first one since September last year – was originally planned for 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

INTER-RELIGIOUS HARMONY

One key theme of the trip is inter-religious harmony. Pope Francis is set to engage not only with local Catholic groups, but also leaders of other faiths and political figures.

He is due to arrive in Jakarta on Tuesday afternoon, and will officially meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the Merdeka Palace on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the Pope is then expected to attend an interfaith meeting at Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta before leading a mass at the Gelora Bung Karno Stadium complex, where around 80,000 Catholics are anticipated to attend.

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any country. Catholics make up 3.1 per cent of its total population of about 280 million.

Observers said the world will look at how much Pope Francis promotes diversity, as well as how much closer he brings the Vatican to Asia.

The tour also holds great significance, given that Asia is considered an important region to the Vatican. Pope Francis has made six previous trips to the continent throughout his papacy.

Dr Michel Chambon, research fellow at the Asia Research Institute’s religion and globalisation cluster, noted that Asia is becoming “more central” in global affairs.

“Asia is maybe one of the few continents that has been able to preserve and develop alternative political models and traditions, religious traditions and political traditions,” he told CNA.

“And so, if the Holy See wants to be truly universal, it has to engage with Asian traditions that have been extremely resilient and creative in engaging with modernity.”

Singapore’s former foreign affairs minister George Yeo, who was also previously a member of the Vatican Council for the Economy, pointed out that Pope Francis has appointed bishops from all over Asia, as well as cardinals from every country in Southeast Asia.

“He does it to express the idea of a universal church, that this is not a European church. It's not a Western church,” Mr Yeo added.

NAVIGATING THORNY GLOBAL ISSUES

The trip also comes amid ongoing wars and crises.

Pope Francis has been outspoken about issues such as migration, climate change and poverty. He has also spoken up against violence in Ukraine, Gaza, and Myanmar.

All eyes will be on how he uses this trip and his role to push the needle on these thorny issues, observers said.

Mr Yeo pointed out: “The pope has no domestic constituency. He only has a universal constituency, and therefore he's able to say things which many of us feel inside, but (which) political leaders cannot always articulate.

“So, he's in a very unusual position, being able to speak on behalf of everyone."

Despite that, Pope Francis' trip may not be free of issues that hit close to home.

Timor-Leste, for example, has seen numerous allegations of Catholic priests' involvement in child sexual abuse.

The Vatican would also need to tread carefully on other sensitive topics like abortion, the death penalty and same-sex marriages.

As the world’s smallest state, the Vatican City has diplomatic relations with almost all nations save for a few – including China, North Korea and Afghanistan.

"When it comes to political leadership, it may be more complex,” said Dr Chambon. 

“You cannot put everything on the table, but for the church itself to find the balance between religion and politics, I think that one big effort is to be engaging and transparent.”

Pope Francis says refusing aid to migrants a 'grave sin'

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/pope-francis-is-embarking-on-his-longest-and-most-challenging-trip-to-asia-yet-heres-what-to-expect

Pope Francis is embarking on his longest and most challenging trip to Asia yet. Here’s what to expect

VATICAN CITY (AP) — If any evidence were needed to underscore that Pope Francis’ upcoming trip to Asia and Oceania is the longest, farthest and most challenging of his pontificate, it’s that he’s bringing along his secretaries to help him navigate the four-country program while keeping up with work back home.

Francis will clock 32,814 kilometers (20,390 miles) by air during his Sept. 2-13 visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, far surpassing any of his previous 44 foreign trips and notching one of the longest papal trips ever, both in terms of days on the road and distances traveled.

That’s no small feat for a pope who turns 88 in December, uses a wheelchair, lost part of a lung to a respiratory infection as a young man and had to cancel his last foreign trip at the last minute (to Dubai in November to participate in the U.N. climate conference) on doctors’ orders.

READ MORE: Pope cancels trip to Dubai for climate conference on doctors’ orders while recovering from flu

But Francis is pushing ahead with this trip, originally planned for 2020 but postponed because of COVID-19. He’s bringing along his medical team of a doctor and two nurses and taking the usual health precautions on the ground. But in a novelty, he’s adding his personal secretaries into the traditional Vatican delegation of cardinals, bishops and security.

The long trip recalls the globetrotting travels of St. John Paul II, who visited all four destinations during his quarter-century pontificate, though East Timor was an occupied part of Indonesia at the time of his landmark 1989 trip.

By retracing John Paul’s steps, Francis is reinforcing the importance that Asia has for the Catholic Church, since it’s one of the few places where the church is growing in terms of baptized faithful and religious vocations. And he is highlighting that the complex region also embodies some of his core priorities as pope – an emphasis on interreligious and intercultural dialogue, care for the environment and insistence on the spiritual component of economic development.

Here is a look at the trip and some of the issues that are likely to come up, with the Vatican’s relations with China ever-present in the background in a region where Beijing wields enormous influence.

Francis loves gestures of interfaith fraternity and harmony, and there could be no better symbol of religious tolerance at the start of his trip than the underground “Tunnel of Friendship” linking Indonesia’s main Istiqlal mosque to the country’s Catholic cathedral.

Francis will visit the underpass in central Jakarta with the grand imam, Nasaruddin Umar, before both partake in an interfaith gathering and sign a joint declaration.

Francis has made improving Christian-Muslim relations a priority, and has often used his foreign travels to promote his agenda of committing religious leaders to work for peace and tolerance, and renounce violence in God’s name.

Indonesia is home to the world’s largest Muslim population and has enshrined religious freedom in its constitution, officially recognizing six religions — Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Protestantism and Catholicism. Francis is likely to highlight this tradition of religious tolerance and celebrate it as a message for the broader world.

“If we are able to create a kind of collaboration between each other, that could be a great strength of the Indonesian nation,” the imam said in an interview.

Papua New Guinea

Francis was elected pope in 2013 largely on the strength of an extemporaneous speech he delivered to his fellow cardinals in which he said the Catholic Church needed to go to the “peripheries” to reach those who need God’s comfort the most. When Francis travels deep into the jungles of Papua New Guinea, he will be fulfilling one of the marching orders he set out for the future pope on the eve of his own election.

Few places are as remote, peripheral and poverty-wracked as Vanimo, a northern coastal town on the main island of New Guinea. There Francis will meet with missionaries from his native Argentina who are working to bring Christianity to a largely tribal people who still practice pagan traditions alongside the Catholic faith.

“If we suspend our preconceptions, even in tribal cultures we can find human values close to Christian ideals,” Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who heads the Vatican’s missionary evangelization office and is part of the Vatican delegation, told the Fides missionary news agency.

Francis will likely reflect on the environmental threats to vulnerable and poor places like Papua New Guinea, such as deep sea mining and climate change, while also pointing to the diversity of its estimated 10 million people who speak some 800 languages but are prone to tribal conflicts.

When John Paul visited East Timor in 1989, he sought to console its overwhelmingly Catholic population who had suffered under Indonesia’s brutal and bloody occupation for 15 years already.

“For many years now, you have experienced destruction and death as a result of conflict; You have known what it means to be the victims of hatred and struggle,” John Paul told the faithful during a seaside Mass in Tasi-Toli, near Dili.

“I pray that those who have responsibility for life in East Timor will act with wisdom and good will towards all, as they search for a just and peaceful resolution of present difficulties,” he said then in a direct challenge to Indonesia.

READ MORE: Pope Francis to visit East Timor as church sex abuse scandals there are met by silence

It would take another decade for the United Nations to organize a referendum on Timor’s independence, after which Indonesia responded with a scorched-earth campaign that left the former Portuguese colony devastated. East Timor emerged as an independent country in 2002, but still bears the trauma and scars of an occupation that left as many as 200,000 people dead — nearly a quarter of the population.

Francis will literally walk in John Paul’s footsteps when he celebrates Mass on the same seaside esplanade as that 1989 liturgy, which some see as a key date in the Timorese independence movement.

“That Mass with the pope was a very strong, very important moment for Timor’s identity,” said Giorgio Bernardelli, editor of AsiaNews, the missionary news agency. “It also in many ways put the spotlight on the drama that Timor was living for the international community.”

Another legacy that will confront Francis is that of the clergy sexual abuse scandal: Revered independence hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner Bishop Carlos Felipe Ximenes Belo was secretly sanctioned by the Vatican in 2020 for sexually abusing young boys.

There is no word on whether Francis will refer to Belo, who is still revered in East Timor but has been barred by the Vatican from ever returning.

Francis has used several of his foreign trips to send messages to China, be they direct telegrams of greetings when he flies through Chinese airspace or more indirect gestures of esteem, friendship and fraternity to the Chinese people when nearby.

Francis’ visit to Singapore, where three-quarters of the population is ethnically Chinese and Mandarin is an official language, will give him yet another opportunity to reach out to Beijing as the Vatican seeks improved ties for the sake of China’s estimated 12 million Catholics.

“It’s a faithful people, who lived through a lot and remained faithful,” Francis told the Chinese province of his Jesuit order in a recent interview.

The trip comes a month before the Vatican is set to renew a landmark 2018 agreement governing bishop nominations.

Just last week, the Vatican reported its “satisfaction” that China had officially recognized Tianjin Bishop Melchior Shi Hongzhen, who as far as the Vatican is concerned had actually taken over as bishop in 2019. The Holy See said China’s official recognition of him under civil law now was “a positive fruit of the dialogue established over the years between the Holy See and the Chinese government.”

But by arriving in Singapore, a regional economic powerhouse which maintains good relations with both China and the United States, Francis is also stepping into a protracted maritime dispute as China has grown increasingly assertive with its presence in the South China Sea.

AP writers Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia and David Rising in Bangkok contributed.

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Pope’s odyssey in Asia and Oceania a story of both peripheries and politics

Pope Francis delivers his blessing as he recites the Angelus noon prayer from the window of his studio overlooking St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Sunday, Aug. 27, 2023. (Credit: Andrew Medichini/AP.)

ROME – As Pope Francis embarks on a grueling four-nation tour of Asia and Oceania that will mark not only the longest but also the must strenuous international voyage for the 87-year-old pontiff, both his passion for the peripheries and his desire to engage global superpowers will be in play.

From Sept. 2-13, Pope Francis will undertake a sweeping 11-day tour that will carry him to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and Singapore.

Marking his 45th international trip and his seventh visit to Asia, the trip will be the longest international voyage of his papacy and one of the most distant, with the initial 13-hour flight from Rome to Jakarta stretching some 11,354 kilometers (7,055 miles).

Featuring 16 speeches and five international flights, Francis’s itinerary would be a challenge for anyone, but it will be especially taxing for an octogenarian missing part of one lung, and who has faced several health scares in recent years.

Last year Pope Francis had two hospital stays, one for what he described as a close call with bronchitis and the other for a surgery to repair an abdominal hernia. He was also forced to cancel a planned trip to Dubai for the COP28 United Nations climate summit due to a serious respiratory infection.

Despite concern over the pontiff’s health, he has been unwavering in his resolve to maintain his travel schedule, having made several daytrips throughout Italy this year without issue, and he has appeared healthy and energetic in recent audiences.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told journalists during an Aug. 30 press briefing on the trip that the pope’s usual medical entourage, usually consisting of a doctor and a nurse, will be traveling with him, but that no other special precautions were being taken.

Originally planned for 2020 but postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the pope’s trip to Asia and Oceania is expected to feature several of the pope’s key agenda items, such as poverty, climate change, unity in diversity, and interfaith dialogue, as well as issues of geopolitical interest, such as multilateralism, the call for peace, and the Vatican’s ongoing engagement with China.

Passion for the peripheries

From the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis has made it a personal priority to shed light on oft-ignored global peripheries, traveling to remote places that have never before welcomed a pope, and which have been scarred by poverty, violence and deep political and social crises.

This affinity for the margins will once again be on display during his Sept. 6-9 visit to Papua New Guinea and his Sept. 9-11 visit to East Timor.

While in Papua New Guinea, where Christianity is the most prominent religion, with roughly 26 percent of the population identifying as Catholic, Francis will meet marginalized populations, holding events with national authorities, local bishops and clergy, street children, and missionaries, who make up a large percentage of the Catholic presence.

In addition to the capital city of Port Moresby, he’ll also visit the remote Diocese of Vanimo, referred to by the local Bishop Francis Meli as “the most remote” diocese in the country, made up largely of bushlands inhabited by remote communities and where infrastructure is lacking and much of the population lives in poverty, and domestic violence against women and girls is a pressing concern.

RELATED: Pope to make voyage to the peripheries in visit to Papua New Guinea

In East Timor, Pope Francis, the first pontiff to visit the country following its independence from Indonesia in 2002, will encounter a population still scarred by war and avid for dialogue after the decades of conflict that led up to its independence.

Speaking to Crux earlier this year, Cardinal Virgilio do Carmo da Silva of Dili, the only city in East Timor that the pope will visit, said Francis’s presence will be a “blessing” and, while the nation enjoys good relations with Indonesia, it will also be an opportunity to continue advancing the cause of unity and reconciliation with their former rulers.

RELATED: East Timor cardinal says papal visit will bring message of peace, tolerance

With ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza showing no signs of abating, and with his freq uent appeals for an end to the various conflicts raging throughout Asia, it is likely the pope could deliver a sweeping call for peace and dialogue in East Timor, stressing, as he has in the past, the need for global leaders to come together to identify solutions and for an end to the global arms trade.

As a majority Catholic nation, where roughly 97 percent of the local population is Catholic, the pope’s visit will also provide an opportunity to shed light on the importance of foreign missionaries and the church’s role in the social development of the country in recent decades.

East Timor will also represent a key, but delicate moment for Pope Francis in the church’s fight against clerical sexual abuse. The country remains divided over allegations of pedophilia against national hero Carlos Ximenes Belo, a bishop and Nobel laureate who has been sanctioned by the Vatican.

RELATED: Vatican envoy to East Timor urges Catholics to respect Belo restrictions

Belo, believed to be residing in Portugal, is a former bishop of Dili who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996 for his efforts in promoting a fair and peaceful solution to the country’s conflict as it fought for its independence.

He stepped down in 2002 at the unusually young age of 54, and in 2022 was publicly accused of the sexual abuse of minors, with the Vatican subsequently saying he had been barred from ministry when allegations arose in 2019.

Belo’s legacy remains a stain on the church in East Timor, but his efforts for national independence also have earned him an enduring support among many East Timorese, making his case a complex and delicate one that Pope Francis will have to navigate with precision.

Engagement with power-centers

In contrast to the physical and existential peripheries Pope Francis will highlight, his visits to Indonesia and Singapore will also provide an occasion for him to forge stronger ties with regional power centers, especially China.

Pope Francis’s Sept. 3-6 stop in Indonesia is significant due to the sheer size of the country, the world’s fourth largest in terms of inhabitants with a population of 275.5 million, roughly 87 percent of whom are Muslim, while only 10 percent are Christian. Catholics themselves make up only about 3.1 percent of the population.

As the world’s largest Muslim nation, Indonesia offers Francis an opportunity to advance interfaith dialogue and to cement ties with the Islamic world, something that has been a consistent priority throughout his papacy.

Francis’s interreligious meeting at Jakarta’s Istiqlal Mosque – which sits directly across the street from the Catholic cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption, and which is connected to the church by an underground tunnel called the “Tunnel of Friendship” – will mark one of the most significant moments of his visit to Indonesia.

RELATED: Priests hope pope in Indonesia will walk ‘tunnel of fraternity’

With concerns about a rise in extremism in recent years – less than a month ago, two Catholic churches were bombed by extremists in East Java – it is expected that the pope will offer encouragement to local Christians and call for an end to religious fundamentalism in his speeches, as well as in a joint-declaration he is expected to sign with Islamic authorities during the interreligious meeting.

Pope Francis’s Sept. 11-13 visit to Singapore is highly anticipated in terms of geopolitical interest, as Singapore is not only consistently ranked among the strongest global economies, with prominent businessmen such as George Yao previously advising the Holy See on matters of finance, but it also enjoys close ties to Beijing.

Roughly 74 percent of Singapore’s population is ethnically Chinese, and though Father Francis Lim, regional superior of Jesuits of Malaysia and Singapore, has said that while most Singaporeans are “a long way from our Chinese roots,” he also said Chinese citizens at times get preferential treatment.

Speaking to journalists during a recent media roundtable on Pope Francis’s visit, Lim said that among foreign workers in Singapore, preference for better jobs is often given to the Chinese.

Despite their ethnic ties, “Singapore does not have much connection with China, so this is going to be a very sensitive issue to bring up, because there’s only a trade relationship between Singapore and China,” Lim said.

Many observers have speculated that Pope Francis while in Singapore will perhaps turn to the city-state as a broker in strengthening Sino-Vatican relations as the Holy See negotiates the third renewal of its agreement with China on episcopal appointments, as well as convincing Chinese authorities to mediate peace in conflicts such as the war in Ukraine.

During Friday’s press conference, Bruni said the pope is not expected to fly over Chinese or Taiwanese airspace during his flights from Rome to Jakarta and from Singapore to Rome, and he is unaware if any bishops or faithful from China will travel to Singapore to participate in papal events.

However, a delegation from Hong Kong is expected to attend the pope’s Mass in Singapore, he said.

Aside from whatever geopolitical issues will underlie the papal visit, observers have said it will also be an opportunity to put a spotlight on a continent known for its cultural, religious and ethnic diversity, and which marks of the fastest-growing Catholic populations in the world.

RELATED: Papal trip will offer Singaporeans a message of hope, cardinal says

Speaking to Italian magazine L’Espresso , British Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, said the papal visit will likely feature pleas on behalf of migrants and appeals to combat climate change, but it will also shed light “on the great cultural and religious diversity of the countries” that will be visited.

“The importance of Asia for the church is undeniable” given the demographics and its cultural patrimony, he said, saying, “I think that Asia also represents a positive model of dialogue and mutual respect that both the universal church and the entire world can benefit from.”

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Democratic Republic of the Congo Travel Advisory

Travel advisory july 9, 2024, democratic republic of the congo - level 3: reconsider travel.

Reissued to reflect changes to the “Do Not Travel” provinces.

Reconsider travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo due to  crime  and  civil unrest . Some areas have increased risk. Read the entire Travel Advisory.

Do Not Travel To:

• North Kivu province due to  crime, terrorism, civil unrest, active volcanoes, armed conflict, and  kidnapping .
• Ituri province due to  crime, civil unrest, terrorism, armed conflict, and  kidnapping .
• The eastern DRC region and the three Kasai provinces (Kasai, Kasai-Oriental, Kasai-Central) due to  crime, civil unrest, armed conflict,  and  kidnapping .

Country Summary:  Violent crime, such as armed robbery, armed home invasion, and assault, is common. Local police lack resources to respond effectively to serious crime. Assailants may pose as police or security agents.

Demonstrations are common in many cities, and some have turned violent. Police may respond with heavy-handed tactics that result in civilian casualties and arrests.

The U.S. government has extremely limited ability to provide emergency consular services to U.S. citizens outside of Kinshasa due to poor infrastructure and security conditions.

Read the country information page  for additional information on travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

If you decide to travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo:

Visit our website for  Travel to High-Risk Areas .

• Avoid demonstrations.
• Use caution when walking or driving.
• Always have a photocopy of your U.S. passport and DRC visa. Keep originals in a secure location. Carry your U.S. passport and DRC visa when crossing provincial borders or flying domestically.
• Enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) to receive Alerts and to make it easier to locate you in an emergency.
• Follow the Department of State on  Facebook  and  Twitter .
• Review the  Country Security Report  for the DRC.
• Prepare a personal contingency plan for emergency situations. Review the  Traveler’s Checklist . Ensure that documents and medications are easy to locate in case you need to leave on short notice.
• Visit the CDC page for the latest  Travel Health Information  related to your travel.

North Kivu Province – Level 4: Do Not Travel

Armed conflict involving armed groups continues in North Kivu, near the major city of Goma. Missiles and armed drones have been used in the conflict. The fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, crowding internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, and contributing to instability in the province.

Violent crime, such as murder, rape, kidnapping, and pillaging, continue throughout North Kivu province. Road travelers are frequently targeted for ambush, armed robbery, and kidnapping.

Terrorist and armed groups operate in North Kivu province. They have attacked military and civilian targets, including humanitarian aid workers, businesspeople, and other NGO personnel operating in the area.

Demonstrations and large gatherings can occur throughout the region, especially in urban areas. Mobs can form rapidly and turn violent, posing a threat to bystanders.

Mount Nyiragongo is an active volcano. It is located near Goma in the volcano region of Virunga National Park.

The U.S. government is unable to provide emergency consular services to U.S. citizens in North Kivu province as travel of U.S. government employees under the U.S. Embassy (Chief of Mission) security responsibility to North Kivu Province is restricted.

Ituri Province – Level 4: Do Not Travel

Violent crime, such as murder, rape, kidnapping, and pillaging, continue throughout Ituri province. Road travelers are frequently targeted for ambush, armed robbery, and kidnapping.

Terrorist and armed groups operate in Ituri province. They have attacked military and civilian targets, including humanitarian aid workers and other NGO personnel operating in the area.

Demonstrations and large gatherings can occur throughout these regions, especially in urban areas. Mobs can form rapidly and turn violent, posing a threat to bystanders.

Armed groups, individuals, and military forces routinely clash with each other. Civilians are frequently targeted in attacks.

The U.S. government is unable to provide emergency consular services to U.S. citizens in Ituri province as travel of U.S. government employees under the U.S. Embassy (Chief of Mission) security responsibility to Ituri Province is restricted.

Eastern DRC Region and the Three Kasai Provinces – Level 4: Do Not Travel

Violent crime, such as murder, rape, kidnapping, and pillaging, continue throughout South Kivu, Tanganyika, Haut Lomami, and three Kasai provinces of Kasai Oriental, Kasai Central, and Kasai. Road travelers are frequently targeted for ambush, armed robbery, and kidnapping.

The U.S. government is unable to provide emergency consular services to U.S. citizens in eastern DRC and these provinces, as travel of U.S. government employees under the U.S. Embassy (Chief of Mission) security responsibility to these regions is restricted.

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