Seoul Gazette - Dreaming of peace, DR Congo faithful flock to see pope

NYSE - LSE

CMSD	0.27%	22.32	$
CMSC	0.04%	22.34	$
NGG	-0.33%	81.57	$
RBGPF	3.42%	62.87	$
GSK	-1.55%	52.23	$
RELX	-2.74%	32.84	$
RYCEF	5.91%	18.11	$
BCE	-0.99%	24.04	$
RIO	0.51%	105.89	$
BCC	0.63%	71.59	$
AZN	-0.83%	177.27	$
JRI	0.89%	12.78	$
VOD	-3.53%	15	$
BP	-2.86%	41.59	$
BTI	-2.06%	61.06	$

Dreaming of peace, DR Congo faithful flock to see pope

BOULEVARD 01.02.2023

One hope united many of the people streaming to see Pope Francis perform mass in DR Congo's capital on Wednesday -- that his presence could at last bring peace to the war-wracked east of the African country.

Text size:

"The war will stop... thanks to the pope's prayer," said Eulalie Nzinga, 63, who got up at 4:00 am to make sure of a space at the airport in the capital Kinshasa, where up to a million people are tipped to attend Pope Francis's mass.

"I'm sick, but I know that as the pope is here, everything will be ok," said Nzinga, who brought her 13-year-old granddaughter along to the N'Dolo airport in the east of the city.

The hope for peace was echoed by many worshippers in a country where conflict has raged in the mineral-rich east for nearly 30 years.

"The pope will bring us peace," Josee Mandjo, 50, told AFP late on Tuesday as he prepared to spend the night in Ndolo along with thousands of others.

As the sun rose, crowds of people streamed into the venue. At 6:00 am, many of the chairs had already been taken and people were sitting on the ground. The heat promised to be intense.

Brandishing flags with the pope's portrait or the national colours, many danced as they waited for the mass to start.

- 'Blessing and peace' -

The DRC is a deeply impoverished central African state, which has secularism enshrined in its constitution. But the former Belgian colony is Africa's largest Catholic nation.

According to estimates, about 40 percent of the population of some 100 million is Catholic. Thirty-five percent of Congolese are Protestants of various denominations, nine percent Muslims and 10 percent Kimbanguists -- a Christian movement born in the Belgian Congo.

Official Vatican statistics put the proportion of Catholics in the DRC at 49 percent of the population.

Treson Nyembo, 29, slept at a church in western Kinshasa with some 100 people before they all boarded a van in the early morning hours, in the hopes of avoiding the monster traffic jams that regularly snarl traffic in the metropolis of 15 million.

Nyembo was determined to attend, as his late father didn't get a chance to see in person the last pope to visit the country, John Paul II in 1985.

"I didn't want to miss this event," Nyembo said sitting in the van, as people around him sang religious songs. "A pope is a blessing and peace."

"My hopes are high," said Godefroy Ngaly, 44, who waited an hour in line before finally being able to enter the venue.

"The pope can lobby so that our compatriots can live in peace," he said, taking a selfie to immortalise the moment. "It's not every day that you see the pope."

W. Winogradow--BTZ

Featured

Eight dead in fiery US bomber crash in California: military

Eight people died when a US B-52 bomber crashed and erupted into a catastrophic fire shortly after takeoff at an air force base in California on Monday, officials said.

'They want to destroy us': Shock and anger as Russian attack sets Kyiv cathedral ablaze

Father Makariy, a high-ranking clergyman at Kyiv's Pechersk Lavra monastery complex, was woken at around 5:00 am with a huge roar -- the cathedral at the heart of one of Orthodox Christianity's most important sites had been set on fire in a Russian attack.

Burnt-out Indonesians beat the blues with children's games

Flushed and sweating, 31-year-old Annisa Enggracia Fidel runs back and forth to defend her fort from invaders -- hundreds of fellow adults all beating the blues by playing a nostalgic Indonesian children's game.

Greek fishermen struggle to keep up with pufferfish invaders

On his fishing boat moored in the Greek port of Ierapetra in southwestern Crete, Alexis Charlambakis pries open the mouth of a freshly-caught pufferfish to reveal two massive teeth on each jaw.