Vatican City, Jul 8, 2011 / 12:08 pm
Pope Benedict XVI is sending a papal delegation to the Republic of South Sudan to mark the east African country’s independence tomorrow, July 9. The delegation will be headed Cardinal John Njue of Nairobi, Kenya.
“The Holy See …invites the international community to support Sudan and the new independent State,” Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., said in a statement issued July 8.
The statement urged northern and southern Sudanese to engage in “frank, peaceful and constructive dialogue” to achieve “just and equitable solutions” to all the questions surrounding the historic secession of South Sudan. The Church also hoped that the process will result in “peace, freedom and development.”
South Sudan’s independence is the end result of a 2005 peace deal that concluded more than two decades of civil war between the Muslim Arab-dominated north and the mainly Christian and animist south. The split was ratified earlier this year in a referendum that saw over 98 percent of southern Sudanese vote for secession.