VATICAN CORNER
Pope Francis made his first trip to the African continent, visiting Kenya, Uganda, and the Central African Republic from Nov. 25th thru 30th, 2015. It was another of his apostolic visits to reach out to the developing world and confirm the faith of the local churches. The first stage was to Kenya, an English speaking country, where Catholics are only 8 million out of a total of 44 million. Kenya’s government has always mismanaged the public goods and ever since it authorized troops to cross the border of Somalia in 2011, Islamic jihadist groups have entered Kenya many times causing death and destruction. A recent attack took place on April 2, when 150 mostly Christian students were killed. Pope Francis met with Kenya’s president and then later with ecumenical and interreligious leaders. He held a Mass on the campus of the University of Nairobi which drew 300,000 people, and he called to help the less fortunate. He met with priests and seminarians visited the UN office and the slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. In his speeches he addressed climate change and poaching. The second stage of Pope Francis’s visit was to Uganda, also an English speaking county where 85% of the population are Catholics or Christians. The Church of Uganda was born from the blood of martyrs. There were 22 servants, pages and officers of the king, who had been converted to Catholicism by missionaries and they along with 23 Anglicans were burned alive for their faith by King Mwanga II between 1885 and 1887. Pope Francis honored the memory of the martyrs with a Mass. In recent years Uganda has had much conflict between different ethnic groups. The Government is run by local oligarchies, which have been coercive and exclusionary. Francis preached a message of reconciliation, calling on people to reach out to “those who might be unfriendly, even hostile, to us” within local communities and across the conflict-ridden region. The third stage of the papal visit was to French speaking Central African Republic which is one of the world’s poorest counties with an average yearly income of $860 per person. The country has known little peace in its 55 year existence. Since 2011 that country has been wracked by a civil war between government forces and several rebel groups with the government still lacking control of the entire county. Pope Francis visited a refugee camp, held a meeting with evangelical Christians and visited a mosque in Bangui, the nation’s capital. With intense security, he ventured into one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods to implore Christians and Muslims to end a spiral of hate, vendetta and bloodshed that has killed thousands over the past three years and divided that nation.
Sources: Inside the Vatican, news.va, catholicnewsservice.com, newyorktimes.com, Reuters.com, usa.today.com, cnn.com, theguardian.com