The Pope’s A359/ITA Airways plane landed at 2:38 p.m. at N’djili International Airport in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where he will stay for four days, thus beginning his fifth trip to Africa that will also take him to South Sudan.
The faithful of Kinshasa, capital of the largest Catholic country on the continent, have prepared a warm welcome for him. Initially scheduled for July 2022, the trip had to be postponed due to the knee pain suffered by Francis, 86, who travels in a wheelchair, as well as security problems in Goma, in the northeast of the country, a stage that was finally cancelled.
On his 40th international trip, the Argentine Pontiff will bring a message of peace and reconciliation to this country plagued by violence and misery. In the DRC, with approximately 100 million inhabitants, two thirds of whom live on less than 2.15 dollars a day, the Pontiff will speak «of the armed clashes and exploitation» suffered by this country rich in natural resources, but with an impoverished population, according to what he said at the Sunday Angelus. On South Sudan, he lamented that it is a country «torn apart by years of war that have forced so many people to live displaced and in conditions of great hardship».
During the flight, the Pope asked for a prayer for all those who tried to cross the Sahara «in search of a little freedom» without succeeding during the flight that takes him to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as reported by the Vatican.
«Right now we are crossing the Sahara. Let us think a little, in silence, a prayer for all those people who, in search of a little consolation, a little freedom, crossed it and did not get it,» he said. He also regretted that so many people suffer when they arrive in the Mediterranean and after having crossed a desert, they are taken to ‘lagers’ (concentration camps) and suffer there.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
