Pope won’t visit SL this year : Vatican

23 Jan 2014 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Vatican on Wednesday announced that Pope Francis would not be visiting Sri Lanka this year, foreign media reported today.

It said the Pope might go to South Korea on August 20, several years after Pope John Paul II visited the Korean peninsula.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said Pope Francis was invited to attend a meeting of young Asian Catholics in August and that trip is "under study."
Lombardi said the Vatican was also considering another papal trip to Asia, but not this year, to the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Francis told reporters last summer en route home from World Youth Day in Brazil that he wanted to go to Asia precisely because Pope Benedict XVI never managed to get to the continent during his eight years as pope, aside from a quick trip to Turkey in 2006. Francis specifically mentioned the invitations he had received from the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

The globe-trotting John Paul made several trips to Asia during his quarter-century papacy. He canonized 103 Korean martyrs during a May 1994 trip to South Korea that kicked off a 10-day odyssey, which included stops in Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Thailand.

Francis so far has one foreign trip confirmed for 2014: a May 24-26 trip to Jordan, Israel and the West Bank.

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Pope won’t visit SL this year : Vatican

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