In an unprecedented act of humbleness, Pope Francis Kneeled down and kisses the feet of South Sudan’s rival leaders. He did this shocking act to plea for bringing peace in the civil war ridden country.
At the closed two-day retreat in the Vatican for the African leaders, the pope asked South Sudan’s president and opposition leader to proceed with the peace agreement despite growing difficulties. Then he got down on his knees and kissed the leaders’ feet one by one.
He appealed to President Salva Kiir, his former deputy turned rebel leader Riek Machar, and three other vice presidents to respect an armistice they signed and commit to forming a unity government next month.
Sudan is a Muslim country but the Southern part is Christian and it broke away to form a new country in 2011. But South Sudan plunged into civil war two years later after Kiir, a Dinka, fired Machar, from the Nuer ethnic group, from the vice presidency.
About 400,000 people died and more than a third of the country’s 12 million people were uprooted, sparking Africa’s worst refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The two sides signed a power-sharing deal in September calling on the main rival factions to assemble, screen and train their respective forces to create a national army before the formation of a unity government next month.
The pope usually holds a ritual washing of the feet with prisoners on Holy Thursday but has never performed such a show of deference to political leaders.
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