In visit to Central African Republic, Pope Francis urges peace

Armoured personnel carriers from French and United Nations peacekeeping forces are helping to protect Francis in the heaviest security ever seen on his travels.

Bangui is the final leg of his first African trip that has already taken him to Kenya and Uganda.

The 78-year-old pontiff is also scheduled to meet government officials, visit a camp for people displaced by the violence and hold a mass in the national stadium before leaving the country on Monday.

Pope Francis says he has come to Central African Republic as a “pilgrim of peace, an apostle of hope” and is encouraging the country to disarm and reconcile.

“Reconciliation, forgiveness, love, peace”, he said in a dramatic voice in the homily of a Mass at the city’s cathedral in the afternoon, appealing to warring militias to “lay down these instruments of death”.

For this to be possible, he said, it’s important that each recognizes the other as a brother, and trying to make his point, asked them to repeat it three times: “We’re all brothers!”

Francis’s big holy year was supposed to have started in St. Peter’s Basilica on December 8, and some 33 million pilgrims are expected in Rome over the course of the year to participate.

“The pope is going to vehicle to encourage dialogue and reconciliation between Christians and Muslims”, said Thierry Vircoulon, Central African Republic project director for the International Crisis Group.

“The Holy Year of Mercy is coming early to this land that has been suffering for years from hate, incomprehension and lack of peace”, he said, standing on the cathedral steps.

Bangui has seen a surge in clashes that have left at least 100 people dead since late September, according to Human Rights Watch, and security has been ramped up ahead of the papal visit.

Unity “is to be lived and built up on the basis of the marvellous diversity of our environment, avoiding the temptation of fear of others, of the unfamiliar, of what is not part of our ethnic group, our political views or our religious confession”, he said in a speech before interim President Catherine Samba-Panza and other dignitaries.

“We absolutely need forgiveness because our hearts have been hardened by the forces of evil”.

France sent in the soldiers in 2013 in an attempt to stem the bloodshed.

The fighting has been compounded by the fact that Christians were being targeted once the rebels launched their offensive, leading to anti-Muslim sentiments and revenge attacks on Muslims. Tens of thousands of Muslim civilians fled for their lives to neighboring Chad and Cameroon.

About 80 percent of the impoverished country’s population is Christian, roughly 15 percent is Muslim and 5 percent animist.

But the challenges facing the Central African Republic are steep. More than 3,000 peacekeepers from the MINUSCA U.N. mission will also be deployed and French troops will be on alert as well. The airport road has been the scene of frequent carnage during the conflict, most recently in late October when two Muslims were abducted and killed after Christian militia fighters stopped their taxi before it reached the airport.