Laconic press release, Friday, from the Vatican to announce the “
postponement”
but to a “
later date which remains to be defined
” of the trip of Pope Francis to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, scheduled for July 2 to 7.
The director of the press room of the Holy See, Matteo Bruni, specifies in a written press release: “
Accepting the request of his doctors, and in order not to compromise the results of
the knee therapies still in progress, the Holy Father, to his great regret, is forced to postpone his Apostolic Journey
".
The pope was to meet in South Sudan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, head of the Anglican Church and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Lord Wallace of Tankernes, to achieve a peace process.
Many questions about the safety of the trip had however been raised.
Current therapy
The official reason for the "
postponement
" of this trip is the ongoing therapy to treat chronic inflammation of the knee ligaments.
The Pope had also had to cancel his trip to Florence in Italy at the end of February for this reason.
Then this African trip was confirmed on March 3 by the Vatican.
But on May 5 François appeared for the first time in public, driven in a wheelchair.
No official communication, on the other hand, on the consequences of the heavy bowel operation, which he had to undergo urgently on July 2021 and which had kept him in hospital for ten days.
Intervention which also feeds many rumors in the Vatican on the real state of health of Pope Francis, 85, who has not yet objectively changed his pace of work and hearings since, even in a wheelchair.
This postponement of the trip to Africa will not, however, fail to fuel these rumours, the intensity of which has increased with the convening, by the pope, of a meeting of all the cardinals of the world in Rome, at the end of the month of August 2022 to tell them about the reform of the Roman Curia.
