VATICAN CITY, March 3, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Pope Francis in July will visit the

Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, two African nations plagued by
violence in which the pontiff has taken particular interest, the Vatican
announced on Thursday.

The 85-year-old pope will be in the DRC from July 2 to 5, visiting the
capital Kinshasa and Goma, the main town in the restive eastern province of
North Kivu, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said.

He will then head to South Sudan from July 5 to 7, visiting the capital Juba,
as part of a trip organised "at the invitation of their respective heads of
state and bishops".

Security is likely to be tight for both parts of what will be the pope's
fifth visit to the African continent and his second overseas trip announced
for this year.

South Sudan, the world's newest nation, has suffered from chronic instability
since independence in 2011, including a brutal five-year civil war.

Meanwhile the DRC, which Pope John Paul II visited in August 1985, is
struggling to contain dozens of armed groups in the east of the vast nation.

- Invaluable gift -

Archbishop Marcel Utembi Tapa, head of the national bishops conference in
DRC, told a press conference in Kinshasa the pope's visit would "revive the
hope of the Congolese people, who need peace, security and well-being".

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, archbishop of Kinshasa, said it was "an invaluable
gift... to our country, to our people, a people who are currently going
through difficult times".

About 40 percent of the estimated 90 million inhabitants of DRC are Catholic,
another 35 percent are Protestant or affiliated to Christian revivalist
churches, nine percent are Muslim and 10 percent follow the Kimbanguist
Congolese church.

The country has a secular government, but religion is omnipresent in most
people's lives and the Catholic Church in particular has at times played a
leading role in local politics.

- Kissing leaders' feet -

South Sudan meanwhile has lurched from crisis to crisis even after a 2018
peace deal, battling flooding and hunger as well as violence and political
bickering as the promises of the agreement failed to materialise.

The United Nations on Tuesday said at least 440 civilians were killed in
fighting between rival armed militias in southwestern South Sudan between
June and September last year.

The Vatican has been directly involved in efforts to end the conflict, with
Pope Francis himself kissing the feet of rival leaders Salva Kiir and Riek
Machar in an extraordinary moment in 2019.

Barnaba Marial Benjamin, South Sudan's minister of presidential affairs, told
journalists in Juba his country would prepare "a great welcome that the
people of South Sudan have been waiting for for many years".

Stephen Ameyu Martin, the archbishop of Juba, added that the pope was
concerned not just about religion but politics and "all of our lives, and so
he has come in solidarity with South Sudan".

Francis has made four visits to the continent of Africa since his election in
2013.

He visited Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic in 2015, Egypt in
2017, and two years later went first to Morocco and then made a week-long
visit to Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius.

The trip to South Sudan and DRC is the second papal visit announced for this
year, with the pope set to travel to Malta on April 2-3.

The pontiff, who last year spent 10 days in hospital after undergoing an
operation on his colon, recently cancelled several engagements due to knee
pain.