Pope Francis visits South Sudan displaced persons camp - The Washington Post

Comment on this storyJUBA, South Sudan — About a thousand lucky people were chosen to see the pope on Saturday — and a few even told him their stories — but the other 46,000 stayed back where they always are, yet another day in a forlorn displacement camp.

While the pope, in a conference hall, talked about the miseries and injustice of losing one’s home, many of the people five miles away in Juba IDP Camp 3, as the site is known, didn’t have the means to watch.

Even in one of the world’s poorest countries, then, there was still room for a profound contrast on Saturday: between a well-planned papal event, words scripted in advance, and the ugliness of a sometimes-violent place where people see their lives permanently disrupted.

A United Nations representative spoke about “food insecurity,” “sexual violence” and “chronic health issues” and “lack of education.” Several teenagers from different camps recited short texts — haltingly, sometimes struggling with their reading comprehension — about their lives and dreams.

The country, over the last years, has seen the limits of the peace deal forged between South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, a Dinka, and his Nuer deputy, Riek Machar.

That deal has ended part of the fighting, but localized clashes among a constellation of ethnic groups continue, sometimes brought on by land disputes as flooding forces more people from their homes.