Pope Francis closed his African tour with a mass for 100,000 people and called for “lay down the weapons of hatred and revenge”

This Sunday morning Pope Francis greeted the people of South Sudan with a field mass about 100,000 people attended in the capital Juba and invited them to “lay down the weapons of hatred and revenge”.

The Argentine Pope left after returning to Rome after two and a half days of pilgrimage to the “youngest country in Africa”, born in 2011 from the split with Sudan that caused millions of deaths.

Francis With his visit he managed to extract a promise from President Salva Kiir that he will resume the peace process currently blocked. But he failed to get a written agreement signed together with supporters of Vice President Riex Marchat and militarized opposition groups.

Two years after independence, a five-year civil war broke out, causing 400,000 and partly continuing deaths, plunging into despair a country that is one of the poorest in the world, with 75% of the population aged 12. Millions of inhabitants who survive thanks to food and health aid from foreign humanitarian organizations.

South Sudan also suffers from the highest newborn mortality rate in the world.

The Pope arrived in South Sudan on Friday accompanied by two Protestant leaders, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Presbyterian, Iain Greenshields. The three have formed an Ecumenical Path unprecedented in the history of Christianity to achieve the pacification of the African country.

In his homily at the mausoleum dedicated to the memory of John Garang, the independence hero killed in a mysterious helicopter crash, Pope Francis has underlined the need to lay down the weapons of hatred and revenge “to exercise prayer and charity”.

“We overcome the aversions that over time have become chronic and threaten to turn tribal and ethnic groups against each other. Let’s learn to put the salt of forgiveness on wounds, which burns but heals”.

In the most massive act of the visitwelcomed with enormous joy that was expressed in songs, dances and cheers for the Pope in this country with 38% of Catholics, he asked them to “build good human relationships and live in fraternity”.

Jorge Bergoglio underlined this “We must prevent the corruption of evil from prevailingthe morbidity of divisions, the filth of illegal business and the scourge of injustices”.

“We Christians, even when we are fragile and small, even when our actions seem small to us in the face of the magnitude of the problems and the blind fury and violence, can make a decisive contribution to changing history”, he remarked.

In a final message which coincided with the Sunday “Angelus”, the Pope praised the cause of peace in South Sudan and reconciliation “to the greatest woman, to the Virgin Mary, queen of peace”.

Francis thanked and blessed “in a special way” all the women of the country, “who suffer and are frustrated”.

The Pope had begun his fifth pilgrimage to Africa and his fortieth. apostolic journey of his pontificate with a four-day visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 90 million inhabitants, half of whom are Catholics. As in South Sudan, the Congolese also suffer continuous waves of violence by armed groups, especially in the east of the country.

Vatican correspondent