Pope considering trip to famine-struck South Sudan
Pope Francis has revealed he is considering the possibility of an official trip to South Sudan.
Days after he made a plea for the international community to respond to “a severe food crisis, which has hit the Horn of Africa region [and] condemns to death by starvation millions of people, including many children”, the Pontiff said that he would like to travel to the affected nation to bring more attention to the plight there.
It was during the Pope’s February 26 visit to Rome’s Anglican church that he made his wishes known during questions on the current situation on both the Catholic and Anglican Churches in Africa.
“My aides and I are studying the possibility of a trip to South Sudan,” he said.
Referring to his meeting last October with Catholic, Episcopalian and Presbyterian bishops from South Sudan who travelled to Rome to appraise him of the ongoing suffering of the populace amid the nation’s ongoing political conflict, Pope Francis added, “The situation is a bit ugly down there but we have to do it because the three of them [the bishops] together want peace and they are working together for peace”.
Independent since 2011, South Sudan was plunged into violence when President Salva Kiir ousted his vice-president Riek Machar in 2013 amid suspicions of a plot to seize the presidency. Supporters of the pair have split along roughly tribal lines and have been in conflict since, with both sides accused of grave violations of human rights.
Responding to the famine declaration, the Catholic bishops of South Sudan issued a pastoral letter last weekend in which they urge an immediate end to the fighting and the scorched-earth policy that had contributed to it.
Vatican and al Azhar renew relations with extremism seminar
The Vatican and al Azhar, the Cairo-based seat of learning for the Sunni Muslim world, have joined in examining practical ways of combating religious extremism.
For the first time since relations were strained in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg address, representatives from Rome joined with Islamic counterparts in Cairo for a special seminar on fundamentalist misinterpretations of religion for the purpose of terrorism.
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, led the Vatican delegation.
During the session, held at al Azhar University between February 22 and 23, Cardinal Tauran urged religious leaders to have the courage to denounce violence committed in the name of religion.
Vatican uses ‘purchasing power’ to assist the vulnerable
The Vatican has begun to buy produce from farmers in those zones of Italy badly hit by earthquakes in 2016 to feed the poor of Rome in a move aimed at benefitting both groups simultaneously.
According to a release from the Vatican, it was at Pope Francis’ “express wish” that the head of the Vatican’s various charities, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, visited earthquake zones “to purchase from small farmers, in great difficulty due to the earthquake, food typical of the affected areas” which was then “immediately distributed” in homeless shelters and soup kitchens across Rome.
The Vatican’s own supermarket outlet has for some time now being stocking foodstuffs from farms in the zones hardest hit by quakes in August and October 2016.