Pope Francis to visit South Korea for first trip to Asia
Pope Francis will arrive in South Korea Aug. 13 for a five-day trip where he will attend an event of Catholic Asian youth and beatify Korean martyrs.
Yonhap News Agency says that the trip will be Francis' first trip to Asia since becoming Pope. Francis is the first Pope to visit South Korea for 25 years.
The Pope will lead four Masses in South Korea, including the closing Mass at Asian Youth Day, a festival bringing together and celebrating Catholic youth in Asia.
The Pope will also make saints out of 124 Koreans who died for the Catholic faith in the 18th and 19th centuries. That event will take place at the Seosomun Martyrs' Shrine, which marks the place where the largest mass execution of South Korean Catholics took place.
Additionally, the Pope has invited survivors of the tragic sinking of the Sewol ferry disaster to the Masses. That tragedy saw the loss of more than 300 lives, most of them students from the same high school.
The Pope also extended invitations to Mass to various social groups throughout South Korea. They include workers fired from Ssangyong Motor Company, and residents of the town of Miryang, who have been protesting a state-owned electrical company's plans to build more high-voltage transmission towers.
The Archdiocese of Seoul had invited 10 North Korean Catholics to come and attend Mass and possibly meet the Pope, but the North Korean authorities denied them permission to travel to South Korea.
Other events on the Pope's itinerary include a visit to a facility for the mentally ill in Eumseong. He will also meet with some 4,000 nuns, priests, and laypersons.
Yonhap notes that around 11 percent of the South Korea population is Catholic, a total of 5.4 million people. There are around 4,300 Catholic priests in South Korea.
