Pope Francis highlights plight of South Sudanese women on his first full day

Pope Francis encouraged priests and nuns to serve their flocks by crying alongside them on Saturday as he began his first full day in a nation plagued by conflict, poverty, and humanitarian disasters in an effort to comfort the long-suffering people of South Sudan.

Francis spent Saturday ministering first to church staff before going to South Sudanese who had to flee their homes due to violence, flooding, and other difficulties. Francis made the first papal visit to the world's newest nation on Friday.

Francis focused especially on the condition of South Sudanese women, who face the worst maternal death rate in the world and are vulnerable to widespread sexual abuse. Half of the South Sudanese women get married before becoming 18 years old.

"Let us ask ourselves what it means for us to be ministers of God in a land scarred by war, hatred, violence, and poverty," Francis said in St. Theresa Cathedral in the capital, Juba.

"How can we exercise our ministry in this land, along the banks of a river bathed in so much innocent blood, among the tear-stained faces of the people entrusted to us?"

Francis exhorted South Sudan's bishops, priests, nuns, and seminarians at the cathedral on Saturday to serve their people by accompanying them rather than entering the monastic life for social prestige.

"It is precisely this art of stepping into the middle of our brothers and sisters that the church’s pastors need to cultivate: the ability to step into the middle of their sufferings and tears, into the middle of their hunger for God and their thirst for love," he said.

Francis learned of the horrifying sacrifices some nuns have made on a day when South Sudan's suffering women are supposed to take centre stage. Congregation of the Sacred Heart Sisters sisters Mary Daniel Abut and Regina Roba Luate were among three people slain in an ambush in 2021.

"Thank you, on behalf of the entire Church, for your dedication, your courage, your sacrifices and your patience," Francis said.