Pope Francis made a final appeal for peace in South Sudan on Sunday as he celebrated Mass before tens of thousands of people to close out an unusual mission by Christian religious leaders to nudge forward the country's recovery from civil war.
“We have suffered a lot,” said Natalima Andrea, a 66-year-old mother of seven who wiped a tear from her eye as she waited for Francis’ Mass to begin. “We need a permanent peace now and I hope these prayers would yield to lasting peace.”
In a bid to spur the process along, Francis was joined on the novel ecumenical peace mission by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and the moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Rt. Rev. Iain Greenshields. The aim of the Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian leaders was toWelby and Greenshields joined Francis on the altar at Mass on Sunday and were to accompany him on the flight back to Rome.
“If we look at South Sudan, I would just use one word: South Sudan is a patriarchal country,” said Elizabeth Nyibol Malou, a lecturer in economics at the Catholic University of South Sudan. Citing cultural norms in which wealth is passed down to male heirs and women are married young for dowries, she said it is a constant struggle to keep girls in school.Women in South Sudan, she said, “are tired. They are struggling. They are frustrated, and they’re stuck.
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