Pope to give English speeches in Korea

(ANSA) - Vatican City, August 7 - Pope Francis will deliver four speeches in English, attend youth events, and beatify 124 martyrs during a visit to South Korea next week, his first trip to Asia as pope.
    During a visit that will emphasize peace, Francis will also celebrate a Mass for reconciliation at the Myeong-dong Cathedral, seat of the Archdiocese of Seoul.
    But despite invitations from his South Korean hosts, a delegation from North Korea has refused to attend the papal service. "Though the division (between North and South Korea) is there, this is a Mass for peace, that will be given an extra emphasis by the presence of Pope Francis", Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Thursday.
    The pope's itinerary is packed with a wide range of events.
    Besides numerous Church-related events including sessions with bishops and religious communities, Francis also has a meeting planned with surviving "comfort women" who were forced into sex slavery by the Japanese army in Korea in the Second World War.
    Some of the surviving women in Korea have become leading public figures.
    Francis also plans to meet with the families of the victims of the April Sewol ferry disaster that killed 304 people - many of them children and teens - following an open-air Mass at the Gwanghwamun Gate on August 16.
    The capsizing of the overloaded Sewol ferry transporting an estimated 476 people and far too many containers from the South Korean mainland to the southern island of Jeju on April 16 remains an open wound with many families demanding a full government probe of the tragedy.
    The pope will deliver 11 speeches throughout his visit including four in English - a language he does not frequently use in public - and deliver the closing Mass at the Sixth Asian Youth Day in Daejeon, according to his itinerary.
    During his four days in Korea, the pope will also meet with South Korean President Park Geun-hye in the capital city of Seoul.
    While in Seoul, he will take part in a canonization ceremony for 124 Korean Catholics who were martyred in the 18th and 19th centuries.
    Francis will also visit the country's newly appointed cardinal, Andrew Yeom Soo-jung.
    In January, Francis named the 71-year-old archbishop of Seoul as a new cardinal, making him the country's third-ever cardinal after Stephen Kim Sou-hwan, who died in 2009, and Nicholas Cheong Jin-suk. South Korea has a Catholic community of more than five million, a sizable portion of its nearly 49-million population whose religious heritage is largely based on Buddhism.
    The Vatican has said that the region is of interest and high importance to the pontiff and one that he has been interested in seeing.
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