The Pope has urged in his last speech in South Sudan to renounce «once and for all to respond to evil with evil» and to lay down arms and revenge after the president of the African country, Salva Kiir Mayardit, has publicly pledged to revive negotiations with dissidents and to resume peace agreements.
«In the name of Jesus, of his Beatitudes, let us lay down the weapons of hatred and vengeance to take up prayer and charity; let us overcome the antipathies and aversions that, over time, have become chronic and threaten to set tribes and ethnic groups against each other; let us learn to put on the wounds the salt of forgiveness, which burns but heals,» Francis said in a Mass before about 70,000 people at the John Garang Mausoleum in Juba before returning to Rome.
«And, although the heart bleeds from the blows received, let us renounce once and for all to respond to evil with evil and we will feel good inside,» he added in the last appointment of his six-day trip to Central Africa in which he also visited the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Francis asked Christians to show themselves to be «people capable of creating bonds of friendship, of living fraternity, of building good human relationships, in order to prevent the corruption of evil, the morbid divisions, the filth of illicit business and the plague of injustice from prevailing».
«We Christians, even if we are fragile and small, even if our strength seems little in the face of the magnitude of the problems and the blind fury of violence, we can make a decisive contribution to change history,» he added.
South Sudanese President Salva Kiir Mayardit publicly pledged Saturday to revive negotiations with dissidents and pardon 71 prisoners, 36 of them sentenced to death. «In honor of the historic visit of the Holy Father Francis to our country, and our declaration of 2023 as the Year of Peace and Reconciliation, I officially announce the lifting of the suspension of the Rome Peace Dialogues with the resistance groups,» the president said in response to the Pope’s speech after their private meeting.
Francis made a strong appeal for peace this Saturday and pointed out that «the time has come to say enough, without conditions and without ifs and buts» in relation to the peace agreement signed in 2018 that came after a war that caused more than 400,000 deaths.
«Enough of spilled blood, enough of conflicts, enough of aggressions and reciprocal accusations about who has been guilty, enough of leaving the people thirsty for peace,» he added.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
