Nairobi, 11 October, 2019 / 3:39 am (ACI Africa).
Some six months since Pope Francis showed a “dramatic gesture” of humility by kneeling and kissing the feet of South Sudan leaders, a section of South Sudanese Catholic children living in Kenya have used their encounter with the Apostolic Nuncio to their country in Nairobi to remind the political leaders back home of the Pope Francis’ April 11 act, demanding peace through service that demonstrates love.
“Could you please bring peace to us by serving us with love, the same way you were served by His Holiness Pope Francis kissing your feet? That is what we call love,” South Sudanese children said in a poem recited before the Apostolic Nuncio in Kenya and South Sudan, Archbishop Bert van Megen after Holy Mass at the Jesuits’ Hekima College Chaplaincy in Nairobi, Kenya Sunday October 6.
The teenagers who introduced themselves as “South Sudan’s Peace Ambassadors” appealed to the political leaders in South Sudan both in government and opposition to listen to them and heed to their pleas.
“We are not asking you to kiss our feet but to stop war and conflict and put aside your differences,” the children emphasized in their poem.
“We are asking our leaders to serve us with love, the same way they were served by the Holy Father by kissing their feet,” they told hundreds of South Sudanese Catholics, among them priests, women and men religious, seminarians, and laity.