The Pope Francis peace mission heading towards S Sudan after Dr Congo

Key takeaways: 

• The Pope and the archbishop are on a historic truce mission to South Sudan.

Pope Francis and an Archbishop of Canterbury made foreign travel together for the first time in history, bound by the most senior figure in the Church of Scotland.

There has never been a trip like it, and it has been years in the planning. 

Pope Francis and Archbishop for a peace mission: 

“This will be a historic trip. After years of division, leaders of three different domains of the Church are assembling together unusually,” says the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.

Their mission is to get hope and inspire leaders to find lasting harmony in South Sudan.

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“We pray that this trip will be a trigger for the leaders of South Sudan to concentrate on what connects them and not what separates them, for they are all adored equally in the eyes of God,” says Rev Iain Greenshields, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

But this visit comes when the nation suffers intense political instability, its people face crumbling poverty, and many observers view the perspective as bleak.

A bloody civil war has destroyed the youngest country in the world since its leaders opposed control of the oil-rich nation in 2013, only two years after its independence from Sudan.