Hanah Zachariah is so determined to see Pope Francis in South Sudan that she walked nine days in sandals to reach the capital where he makes his long-awaited visit.

On Thursday, the 20-year-old reached the outskirts of Juba after walking most of the way from the central town of Rumbek — a journey of around 400 kilometres (250 miles).

She was not alone.

Sixty other young pilgrims and spiritual leaders trod the distance, waving flags, singing hymns and preaching unity in a country scarred by years of civil war.

“We are walking for peace. When we reach Juba, we are going to welcome the pope. I am very excited to see him,” Zachariah told AFP, as passing cars honked their horns and cheered at the colourful convoy.

Francis arrives on Friday for a three-day visit to South Sudan, the first by any pope since the predominantly Christian nation split from Muslim-majority Sudan in 2011.

Its history since independence has been marred by five years of ethnic bloodshed that left 380,000 people dead and much of the young country in ruins.

‘Blisters’

Many hope Francis can restore a spirit of unity and brotherhood, and South Sudanese are flocking to Juba to hear his message of reconciliation.

Among them is John Sebit, a pastoral worker who covered the distance from Rumbek along dirt roads in flip flops.

“When we started the journey, it was challenging. Some people had blisters on their feet… But with motivation, we kept going,” the 26-year-old told AFP.

Father Christian Carlassare, the bishop of Rumbek, confessed to having “sore feet” after setting off on January 25 but said walking was a powerful act of solidarity.

“You do not walk alone,” said Carlassare, an Italian who has lived in South Sudan for more than 15 years, and was shot multiple times at his home in 2021 after being named bishop.

“At every community we had the entire village –- really, hundreds of people — who were coming to welcome us on the way.”

To avoid the oppressive heat of the dry season, the pilgrims would start walking before dawn each day. They would set up camp each evening in classrooms along the way.

‘First time’ on tarmac

When the distance between stops was too great, support vehicles would assist with covering the outstanding distance, while a doctor onboard tended to cramps and bruises.

For some, the journey to the capital has proved eye opening.

“This is my first visit to Juba, and actually my first time stepping on a tarmac road,” said 23-year-old John Mareng as he walked along the highway just outside Juba.

“Now, I have seen how this is reality.”

Hailing from a broad cross-section of South Sudan’s myriad ethnic groups, the pilgrims would perform skits for their hosts about the importance of kinship.

“We are walking as a group, as one people,” said 20-year-old Tafisa Chol, a student in Rumbek.

“The message that we are hoping to give to the people, is that we should be one, and make peace among ourselves.”

Source: AFP

Pope Francis on Wednesday urged people in Democratic Republic of Congo, where decades of armed conflicts have killed millions, to grant each other a “great amnesty of the heart” and called on Christians engaged in battle to lay down their arms.

On the first full day of his trip, his third to sub-Saharan Africa as pope, Francis presided at an open-air mass for a crowd local authorities estimated at more than a million people on the grounds of a secondary airport in the capital Kinshasa.

The Congolese have given the pope one of the most vibrant welcomes of his foreign trips. On his arrival on Tuesday, tens of thousands lined his motorcade route.

At the sprawling site on Wednesday his popemobile moved slowly on the runway, with hundreds of thousands of people singing and dancing on either side before he began a mass from a large altar platform.

Many women wore dresses with his picture emblazoned on them, as is customary in many African countries to honour dignitaries, while children climbed on a disused plane for a better view.

The country’s people, the pope said in his homily, were suffering from “wounds that ache, continually infected by hatred and violence, while the medicine of justice and the balm of hope never seem to arrive”.

Armed conflict has left 5.7 million people internally displaced and 26 million facing severe hunger, according to the United Nations.

Francis said God wanted the people to find “the courage to grant others a great amnesty of the heart”.

“What great good it does us to cleanse our hearts of anger and remorse, of every trace of resentment and hostility!” he said.

Eastern Congo has been plagued by violence connected to the long and complex fallout from the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda. Congo accuses Rwanda of backing the M23 rebel group fighting government troops in the east. Rwanda denies this.

“We left because of the war,” said Lea Serundoru, 21, a high school student who fled fighting in Rutshuru territory near the border with Uganda, an area that was hit by fighting between the army and M23 last year.

‘Lay down your arms’

A papal stop in the eastern city of Goma, foreseen when the trip was originally scheduled for last July, was later scrapped because of the flare-up in violence last year.

Serundoru said she hoped “the armed groups would listen to the pope and put down their arms because he is a strong and powerful man, and we have faith that everything will return to normal”.

About half of Congo’s population of 90 million are Roman Catholics and in his homily, Francis addressed them as well as other Christians involved in the fighting.

“May it be a good time for all of you in this country who call yourselves Christians but engage in violence. The Lord is telling you: ‘Lay down your arms, embrace mercy,'” the pope said.

Thousands of people had spent the night praying at the airport in the build-up to the service.

“The country is not well. There are divisions, hatred, lots of massacres, especially in the east. After the pope’s homily, I hope peace will return,” said Patrick Mukaba, a 35-year-old lawyer, who was there with his wife Laetitia.

Congo has some of the world’s richest deposits of diamonds, gold and other precious metals, but its wealth has stoked conflict between government troops, militias and foreign invaders, as well as driving exploitation and abuses.

The pope will meet victims of violence from the eastern part of Congo later on Wednesday.

Thursday will be his last full day in Congo, before he departs on Friday for neighbouring South Sudan, another country grappling with conflict and hunger, on Friday morning.

For the South Sudan visit, he will be with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of Scotland Moderator, an unprecedented joint foreign trip by the three Christian leaders.

Source: Reuters