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Pope to Visit to South Sudan in July

Pope Francis holds the weekly general audience at the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, March 2, 2022. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane
Pope Francis holds the weekly general audience at the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, March 2, 2022. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane
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Pope to Visit to South Sudan in July

Pope Francis holds the weekly general audience at the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, March 2, 2022. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane
Pope Francis holds the weekly general audience at the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, March 2, 2022. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane

Pope Francis will visit South Sudan in July, the Vatican said on Thursday, making a trip he has repeatedly had to delay because of security concerns in a country still emerging from a post-independence civil war.

July will mark the 11th anniversary of South Sudan's secession from Sudan. Civil war erupted two years later in 2013, causing 400,000 deaths. The two main sides signed a peace deal in 2018 but hunger and deadly clashes are still common across the country.

The Vatican said Francis will be in South Sudan July 5-7 after visiting the Democratic Republic of Congo July 2-5 on the same trip, Reuters reported.

Though the 2018 peace deal halted the worst violence of that war, analysts say there are several unresolved issues, such as stalled reunification of the national army, that could plunge the country back into widespread conflict.

The pope has wanted to visit South Sudan for years but each time planning for a trip began it had to be postponed because of the unstable situation.

In 2019 Francis hosted South Sudan's opposing leaders at a Vatican retreat where he knelt and kissed their feet as he urged them not to return to conflict.

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US Agency Focused on Foreign Disinformation Shuts Down

The State Department's Global Engagement Center has faced scrutiny and criticism from Republican lawmakers and Elon Musk. Mandel NGAN / AFP
The State Department's Global Engagement Center has faced scrutiny and criticism from Republican lawmakers and Elon Musk. Mandel NGAN / AFP
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US Agency Focused on Foreign Disinformation Shuts Down

The State Department's Global Engagement Center has faced scrutiny and criticism from Republican lawmakers and Elon Musk. Mandel NGAN / AFP
The State Department's Global Engagement Center has faced scrutiny and criticism from Republican lawmakers and Elon Musk. Mandel NGAN / AFP

A leading US government agency that tracks foreign disinformation has terminated its operations, the State Department said Tuesday, after Congress failed to extend its funding following years of Republican criticism.
The Global Engagement Center, a State Department unit established in 2016, shuttered on Monday at a time when officials and experts tracking propaganda have been warning of the risk of disinformation campaigns from US adversaries such as Russia and China, AFP reported.
"The State Department has consulted with Congress regarding next steps," it said in a statement when asked what would happen to the GEC's staff and its ongoing projects following the shutdown.
The GEC had an annual budget of $61 million and a staff of around 120. Its closing leaves the State Department without a dedicated office for tracking and countering disinformation from US rivals for the first time in eight years.
A measure to extend funding for the center was stripped out of the final version of the bipartisan federal spending bill that passed through the US Congress last week.
The GEC has long faced scrutiny from Republican lawmakers, who accused it of censoring and surveilling Americans.
It also came under fire from Elon Musk, who accused the GEC in 2023 of being the "worst offender in US government censorship [and] media manipulation" and called the agency a "threat to our democracy."
The GEC's leaders have pushed back on those views, calling their work crucial to combating foreign propaganda campaigns.
Musk had loudly objected to the original budget bill that would have kept GEC funding, though without singling out the center. The billionaire is an advisor to President-elect Donald Trump and has been tapped to run the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasked with reducing government spending.
In June, James Rubin, special envoy and coordinator for the GEC, announced the launch of a multinational group based in Warsaw to counter Russian disinformation on the war in neighboring Ukraine.
The State Department said the initiative, known as the Ukraine Communications Group, would bring together partner governments to coordinate messaging, promote accurate reporting of the war and expose Kremlin information manipulation.
In a report last year, the GEC warned that China was spending billions of dollars globally to spread disinformation and threatening to cause a "sharp contraction" in freedom of speech around the world.