KINSHASA: Massive crowds thronged for a glimpse of Pope Francis as he made his way through the streets of Kinshasa on Tuesday, after arriving in DR Congo with a message of peace for a country ravaged by decades of conflict.

Waving flags and cheering, residents of Kinshasa ran after the popemobile, which wound through working-class districts towards the presidential palace, after the 86-year-old Pope Francis descended from his plane in a wheelchair. The Argentine pontiff is on his fifth trip to Africa, during which he will also visit conflict-hit South Sudan.

“We’ve been waiting for a year, it’s a beautiful trip,” the 86-year-old pope told reporters travelling aboard his plane. It is the first time since 1985 that a pope has visited the Democratic Republic of Congo, a desperately poor country of about 100 million people, 40 per cent of whom are Catholic.

“I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see him face to face,” Maggie Kayembe, a woman in her thirties, said as she waited for the pope. “He always preaches peace wherever he goes, and peace, we really need it,” she added.

The six-day trip to DRC and South Sudan had been planned for July 2022, but postponed due to the pontiff’s knee pain that has forced him in recent months to use a wheelchair. He boarded the plane in Rome via an elevator.

Security concerns were also said to play a role in delaying the trip, and a stop in Goma in DR Congo’s east, where dozens of armed groups operate, is no longer on the itinerary.

“I would have liked to go to Goma too, but with the war, you can’t go there,” the pope told reporters on the plane. On Sunday, he had offered his greetings “with affection to those beloved peoples who await me”.

Published in Dawn, February 1st, 2023