Pope Francis’s proposed trip to South Sudan later this year has been postponed for security reasons.
Vatican spokesman Greg Burke has confirmed that the trip, which would have been with Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby, will not now go ahead, at least this year.
Rome’s daily newspaper Il Messaggero reported on Monday that Pope Francis made the decision reluctantly “after the information coming to his desk left him with few alternatives”.
South Sudan, which gained its independence from Sudan in 2011 after years of civil war, is the world’s youngest country. It has been war-torn since a political struggle in 2013, with some 300,000 people believed to have died and 3 million displaced.
