Vatican City.- As is his custom, Francis announced another trip to an area that suffered violence and religious intolerance, this time Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, on June 6.
Leaning out of the window of the pontifical palace in St. Peter’s Square, during a message following praying the Angelus, the Pontiff made his second international trip of this year official: “I ask you from now on to pray for me.”
I hope that this trip “gives courage to the Catholic faithful, raises a ferment of good and contributes to consolidating fraternity and peace, interreligious dialogue and friendship,” said Francisco, quoted by the EFE news agency.
Sarajevo is one of the most devastating examples in recent European history of how the political use of religious differences can unleash a bloody civil war for a young country, such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of the republics created following the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. .
As in the case of the trip to Albania last September, Francis will only be in Sarajevo for a few hours and the axis of his message will be tolerance and religious coexistence, one of the pillars with which Bosnia-Herzegovina was built following the war.
Sarajevo is a Muslim-majority city with a significant Orthodox and Catholic population.
Like the rest of the country, pacification and coexistence were achieved by dividing the territory. At a general level, the nation is divided between the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska.
Pope John Paul II visited Bosnia in April 1997, two years following the war, and returned in June 2003, when he proclaimed the layman Ivan Merz blessed.
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2024-04-26 14:02:34
