The Pope’s arrival in Uganda is likely to attract pilgrims around the world from as far afield as Australia and the United States but Mgr Kauta hopes that the visit will also encourage inter-religious dialogue with the Muslim community already welcoming the Pope too.
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Pope Francis has sent a video sent message of “peace, reconciliation, dialogue” to Kenya, Uganda and the conflict-torn Central African Republic on the eve of a visit to the three nations.
Regardless of the challenges, Africa is a place of guarantee for the Catholic Church, which has withered in Europe and the Americas because of growing secularism and competing evangelical and Protestant churches. In Kenya, about 30 percent of the 45 million population are baptised Catholics, including President Uhuru Kenyatta.
“We are ready to receive him”, Kenya’s inspector general of police, Joseph Boinnet, said.
More than 2 million people are expected to converge near a minor basilica in the Ugandan capital where Pope Francis will celebrate Mass on Saturday, an official with the Roman Catholic Church here said Monday even as workers put in extra hours to spruce up the shrine. Kenyan media has stated at the very least 10,000 officers can be concerned.
Al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaida, has conducted major attacks in Kenya, including the 2013 attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall and an April attack on a university in Garissa that killed almost 150 people. In Uganda, where homosexuality is illegal and where attacks against gays have forced many to flee overseas or lead secret lives, gay leaders nevertheless hope Francis when he comes on Friday will weigh in with a firm message of tolerance.
Potentially probably the most hazardous cease of his journey is the third leg to the Central African Republic.
He will reach out to “folks who are afraid, who’ve been terrorized, who have been subjected to a great deal of security checkpoints and all that”, said Rev. Stephen Okello, a Kenyan Catholic priest who also recalled unrelated ethnic violence following elections in 2007 that killed more than 1,000 individuals in Kenya.
His schedule in Bangui, the capital, features a go to to a mosque in probably the most harmful districts.
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“As we are privileged to be hosting His Holiness the Pope at the time, he will set the tone for the day”, State House Spokesperson Manoah Esipisu said in statement on November 24.
