A dispute between militiamen and cattle herders in a rural region ended with the murder of 27 people in South Sudan a day before Pope Francis arrived in the country.
The pontiff lands in the youngest nation in the world, independent since 2011, this Friday (3), around 3 pm local time (10 am in Brasilia time) – the trip is part of a small tour of the pontiff by Africa, and included a tour of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The episode took place in the state of Equatoria Central, which is also home to the country’s capital, Juma. At first, members of a local militia killed six people from a pastoralist community. These in turn retaliated by taking the lives of 21 civilians in a nearby area, including five children and a pregnant woman, according to Al Jazeera’s report.
On his third visit to sub-Saharan Africa since the beginning of his papacy 10 years ago, the 86-year-old Catholic Church leader is seeking to restore peace in a region ravaged by years of violence.
In the case of South Sudan, a peace treaty signed by the main groups participating in the civil war that mobilized the territory between 2013 and 2018 had significantly reduced violence in the country. But disputes between rival communities are still frequent.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who is accompanying the pope to South Sudan along with the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, said he was horrified by recent local developments. Francisco, who ended his trip to the DRC in a meeting with bishops in the capital, Kinshasa, did not comment on what happened.
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