After spending nearly a decade in a camp for the displaced in South Sudan’s Juba, Mayen Galuak hopes that Pope Francis’s visit to the capital city next week will inspire political leaders to finally
restore peace, allowing him to go home. There are 2.2 million internally displaced people in South Sudan as a civil war that began in 2013 continues to simmer.
In the ensuing years, he has watched as South Sudan’s leaders forged peace deals and broke them; as militias carried out and denied ethnic massacres;
The 86-year-old pontiff is flying to Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to 45 million Catholics, on Tuesday.
On Friday, he heads to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, where he will be joined by the leaders of the Anglican Church and the Church of Scotland.
The six-day trip was originally planned for July 2022 but was postponed after Pope Francis suffered problems with his knee, which have recently forced him to use a wheelchair.
There were also concerns about his planned visit to the east of the DRC, where dozens of armed groups roam including M23, which recently came within several miles of the commercial hub of Goma.