The pope is scheduled to visit the Congolese capital of Kinshasa from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3, where he will meet with victims of violence from the country’s eastern region.
Pope Francis was originally scheduled to also visit Goma, the capital of North Kivu, in addition to Kinshasa in his July itinerary before the trip was postponed to February. The stop was removed from the 2023 schedule, likely due to security concerns in the eastern DRC.
The violence in eastern Congo has created a severe humanitarian crisis with more than 5.5 million people displaced from their homes, the third-highest number of internally displaced people in the world.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege has said that he hopes the pope’s January visit will shed light on the “crimes against humanity” occurring in the DRC’s eastern region.
The Allied Democratic Forces, an African affiliate of the Islamic State, attacked a Catholic mission hospital in the country’s northeast province of North Kivu in October 2022 and killed six patients and Catholic Sister Marie-Sylvie Kavuke Vakatsuraki.
Another armed rebel group, the M23, executed 131 people “as part of a campaign of murders, rapes, kidnappings, and looting against two villages,” the U.N. reported Dec. 8, 2022.
Pope Francis’ condolence message after the bombing was addressed to Rev. Andre Bokundoa-Bo-Likabe, the president of the Church of Christ in Congo, who has called for “credible investigations to establish responsibility” for the attack and for the government to ensure proper care for “all the wounded scattered in different hospitals.”
Congolese Catholic Bishop Melchisedec Sikuli Paluku also condemned the “heinous” attack on the Protestant church and reassured the families affected of his diocese’s “fervent prayers in this time of trial.”
Paluku, the bishop of Butembo-Beni in eastern Congo, stressed that authorities have the obligation to “to protect citizens as well as their property” and “to scrupulously enforce the principle of the sacredness of life and the inviolability of places of worship.”
“Anyone who kills is against God's plan,” the bishop said.
