Pope Plans 1-day Visit to Sarajevo in June

Pope Francis said Sunday he will make a one-day trip in June to Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, his latest visit to a country where Islam is the dominant religion amid growing persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

Francis told pilgrims after the weekly Angelus prayer in St. Peter's Square that he would visit Sarajevo June 6 to pray for peace and inter-religious dialogue in the Muslim-majority city that became a bloody symbol of the Balkans wars of the 1990s.

His trip will be the first papal trip to Sarajevo in 18 years. Francis called on the faithful to pray that his visit would be a boost for the Catholic population, and "give rise to the development of good and contribute to the consolidation of brotherhood and peace."

Pope John Paul II visited Sarajevo in April 1997, just two years after the end of the war that claimed 100,000 lives. John Paul ignored apparent assassination threats to visit the city, urging greater dialog between Bosniak Muslims, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs.

Source: VOA News