• The Pope is making the visit at a time when eastern DRC is facing security challenges instigated by rebels
• South Sudan is racing against time to meet the peace agreement implementation deadline of February 2023.
Image: REUTERS
Pope Francis is scheduled to visit the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan between July 2-7.
This will be the Pope's fourth visit to Africa, having toured Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic in 2015 and Mozambique, Mauritius and Madagascar in 2019 and Egypt in 2017.
Francis had announced the trip at the St Peter’s Square in 2019 but the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the visit.
The Pope is making the visit at a time when eastern DRC is facing security challenges, while South Sudan is racing against time to meet the peace agreement implementation deadline of February 2023.
According to Crux, which covers the Vatican, the aim of the trip is to strengthen the peace process following a spiritual retreat that the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Francis led at the Vatican in 2019.
The Pope kissed the feet of President Salva Kiir and First Vice President Riek Machar at the close of a two-day spiritual retreat in April 2019 and urged them to ensure peace in their country.
"I am asking you as a brother to stay in peace. I am asking you with my heart, let us go forward," the pontiff said in the unprecedented move on political leaders.
Among the outstanding issues are failure to ratify key laws and state governments function properly; delay in uniting the forces, lack of the Special Reconstruction Fund and failure to resettle millions of South Sudanese who are in refugee camps outside the country or in IDP camps.
A Juba-based conflict analyst, who sought anonymity, opined that the papal visit will be highly symbolic given his eminence standing globally.
Recalling that the visit is a follow up of the Rome spiritual retreat the analyst said the visit will provide mediators in the peace process vital currency to extract concessions from the warring actors in the short term. This, he said, is because of the international focus the visit bears on South Sudan.
"Additionally, the warring parties will be hard-pressed by the visit to make some sort of concessions or gestures towards implementing the peace agreement," he added.
In Kinshasa, Pope Francis will hold talks with President Felix Tshisekedi and the diplomatic corps.
According to the itinerary seen by the Star, the Pope will also have a private meeting with members of the Society of Jesus in the Apostolic Nunciature in Kinshasa.
The Society of Jesus has been instrumental in the Catholic peace building efforts in the DRC through the Jesuits’ initiative against weapons that fuel the crisis in the Great Lakes region.
On Sunday, July 3, the Pope will conduct the Holy Mass at Ndolo Airport in Kinshasa and later meet with bishops, priests, religious and consecrated persons as well as seminarians in the Cathedral "Notre Dame du Congo" in Kinshasa.
On Monday, the Pope will depart from Kinshasa Ndjili International Airport to Goma for a Holy Mass at Kibumba Camp. There, he will meet with victims of the violence in Beni and in the East of Congo at the Goma Diocesan Welcome and later return to Kinshasa.
Father Georges Kalenga, the second deputy secretary-general of the Congolese bishops’ conference, told Catholic News Service that the pope will be visiting to reconcile a people blighted by the evils of “tribalism, regionalism and clientelism, the exclusion of political opponents, practices and discourses that weaken social ties, compromise national cohesion on several levels, particularly on the socio-political level.”
The Holy Father will leave Kinshasa on Tuesday to Juba accompanied by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
In February, Welby said: “God willing, sometime in the next few months, maybe year, we will go to see them in Juba, not Rome, and see what progress can be made”.
In Juba, the Pope will hold talks with President Kiir at the presidential palace in Juba before meeting with the five vice presidents — Machar, James Wani Igga, Taban Deng Gai, Rebecca Garang and Hussein Abdelbag — at the same venue.
The Community of Sant'Egidio, a Catholic social service organisation based in Rome, has been at the fore front in the peace negotiations, including here in Nairobi.
There is also a scheduled meeting with various authorities, civil society and the diplomatic corps in the garden of the Presidential Palace.
On Wednesday, Pope Francis will visit internally displaced people at the IDPs camp in Juba, meet the Society of Jesus in the Apostolic Nunciature, Catholic clerics in the Cathedral of Saint Therese and later hold ecumenical prayer at John Garang Mausoleum.
After the Holy Mass, he will hold a farewell ceremony at Juba International Airport and depart for Rome.