Pope calls for laying down weapons of hate at mass in South Sudan

This Sunday, the Pope repeated the call for peace in South Sudan during a Mass in Juba attended by some 70,000 people, urging political leaders to lay down their weapons of hatred and revenge.

“In the name of Jesus, His Beatitudes, let us lay down our weapons of hatred and vengeance,” Pope Francis said, calling on political leaders to overcome “the animosity and aversion that has become chronic over time and threatens to oppose the tribes.” and nationality” and “sprinkle the wounds with the salt of forgiveness, which burns but heals.”

At a mass held near John Garang’s mausoleum, Francis asked people to refuse to “repay evil for evil once and for all,” even if “the heart bleeds for injustice.”

Pope Francis was greeted with songs and expressions of joy by the country’s Catholics, who make up about 36% of the population of South Sudan and are experiencing a serious humanitarian crisis due to war, famine and natural disasters.

On the last day of his pilgrimage to Africa, Francis also asked Catholics to show themselves as “people capable of creating bonds of friendship, living brotherhood, building good human relations, preventing the decay of evil, painful divisions, the filth of business and the plague of injustice prevailing.”

“Let us accept each other and love each other sincerely and generously, as God loves us,” the Pope said in a message that aims to revive hope in the youngest country in the world, as well as one of the poorest.

Accompanied by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the head of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, Ian Greenshields, two of the most respected denominations in the country, the Pope arrived in South Sudan on Friday after visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Francis is designing a historic ecumenical pilgrimage to draw the world’s attention to the country’s plight and encourage its peace process.

The purpose of the ecumenical visit is to encourage political leaders in South Sudan to work out a 2018 peace deal that will end the civil war that erupted after the predominantly Christian country gained independence from Muslim-majority Sudan in 2011.

Upon their arrival on Friday, Francis bluntly warned President Salva Kiir and his former rival, now MP Riek Machar, that history would judge them severely if they continued to delay the implementation of the peace deal.

Kiir, for his part, ordered the government to return to the peace talks, which were suspended last year, with groups that did not sign the 2018 agreement.

On Friday, the head of the Catholic Church pardoned 71 inmates of the Juba Central Jail in honor of the ecumenical pilgrimage, including 36 prisoners on death row, after Francis said that the death penalty is unacceptable under any circumstances.