Currents News Staff
The Vatican has announced the pope’s fourth papal trip to Africa this upcoming September, just ahead of Pope Francis’ two-day trip to Morocco this weekend.
The pope will travel to Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius from September 4 to 10. It is Pope Francis’ sixth confirmed international trip for 2019.
The full schedule for the six-day visit has not yet been published. Yet, the Vatican has said the pope will visit the city of Maputo in Mozambique, Antananarivo in Madagascar and in the Mauritius Islands he will go to Port Louis.
The theme for each country is peace, which is represented in the mottoes and logos the Vatican published for each leg of the pope’s new apostolic journey.
This will be the fourth time that Pope Francis visits Africa after his trip to Kenya, Uganda and the Central African Republic in 2015; his visit to Egypt in 2017; and his next trip to Morocco on March 30 and 31.
Mozambique is one of the countries recently affected by a cyclone and deadly flooding in Africa. Pope Francis expressed his closeness with the country just last week.
“These days, great floods have sown grief and devastation in various regions of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. To those dear people I express my pain and my closeness,” he said.
In Mozambique alone, an estimated 447 people have died and 1.85 million are in need of urgent assistance as a result of the natural disaster.
Unlike the crowd awaiting Pope Francis for this weekend’s trip to majority Muslim Morocco, around a quarter of the population in Mozambique, Mauritius and Madagascar are Catholics.