The pope hardly ever kisses feet, even whether it is the president or another highest authority of a country on earth.The pope, who doesn’t do it often, once shocked everyone by kissing the feet of Sudan’s head of state.
In what has been described as an unusual appeal for peace through an even more unusual approach, Pope Francis took time to kiss the feet of South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and four of the nation’s five designated vice presidents: Riek Machar, James Wani Igga, Taban Deng Gai and Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior as a way of appealing to them to maintain peace and be fathers of the nation, protect the people and desist from war.
Previously Kiir said his 2019 meeting with Pope Francis was especially meaningful for him, as he grew up in an area of South Sudan that was evangelized primarily by Catholic missionaries, from whom he has learned much.
Salva Kiir, a Catholic who has served as South Sudan’s first and only president since the country gained independence in 2011, oversees a country that is slightly smaller than Texas, 60% Christian, and severely underdeveloped and racked by ethnic tensions.
In an unprecedented act of humbleness to encourage them to strengthen the African country’s faltering peace process.
Sudan, which is predominantly Muslim, and the mainly Christian south fought for decades before South Sudan became independent in 2011. 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 surprising and moving gesture of Pope Francis previously at the conclusion of the two-day spiritual retreat for peace in South Sudan, which the Pope hosted in his own house, has an evangelical flavour. And it occurred exactly one week before the same gesture will be repeated in the churches of the whole world, in memory of the Last Supper, when Jesus, now at the vigil of His Passion, washing the feet of the Apostles, showed them the way of service.
At Casa Santa Marta, after having asked, “like a brother”, the leaders of South Sudan to “remain in peace”, Pope Francis with visible suffering wanted to bow down before them in order to kiss their feet. He therefore prostrated before the president of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit, and the vice-presidents designate who were present, including Riek Machar and Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabio.
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..Read Original