Rome Newsroom, Dec 9, 2022 / 04:18 am
Pope Francis met Friday with Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege, a Congolese physician known for his work treating victims of sexual violence.
The private audience at the Vatican on Dec. 9 comes as Pope Francis is preparing to travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) next month.
Mukwege has said that he hopes the pope’s January visit will “shed light on what is happening in the Congo.”
“The international community is making the same mistake as it did in Rwanda when it allowed the genocide of the Tutsis. Today Rwandan-backed guerrillas are massacring the Congolese: these are crimes against humanity, war crimes that can also be crimes of genocide. And the international community has closed its eyes as it closed them in 1994,” he told Vatican News on Dec. 5.