Pope Francis leaves on Wednesday for five days in South Korea, his first outing to Asia and a trip that seems almost perfectly to capture both the promise and the peril of his ambition to be a “Peace Pope.”
The pontiff is scheduled to meet government leaders and to take part in an Asian Catholic youth festival. He’ll beatify a group of Korean martyrs from the 18th and 19th centuries, giving him a chance to shine a spotlight on contemporary martyrdom from nearby North Korea to Iraq, where last week the pope named a personal representative to voice his concern for Christians and other minorities fleeing the radical Islamic forces.
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