VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis will postpone his upcoming trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan due to an ongoing knee problem, the Vatican said Friday.
“At the request of his doctors, and in order not to jeopardize the results of the therapy that he is undergoing for his knee, the Holy Father has been forced to postpone, with regret, his Apostolic Journey to the Democratic Republic of Congo and to South Sudan,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement.
The trip, originally planned for July 2 to 7, will be rescheduled though no new date has been set.
Francis, 85, has been suffering from pain in his right knee in recent weeks and last month relied on a wheelchair for the first time at a public event.
He has canceled numerous engagements — and postponed a scheduled trip to Lebanon in June — and has sometimes been seen struggling to walk.
The Vatican has not said officially what the problem is, although sources have told AFP he has chronic arthritis.
The pope himself has also spoken of an injured ligament in his knee.
He told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera last month he would receive an “intervention with infiltration,” which Vatican sources said involved injecting anti-inflammatories into his joint.
The Vatican, which announced the trip to Africa in March, had already published its schedule.
The pontiff was to visit the DRC’s capital of Kinshasa, as well as Goma, the main town in the restive eastern province of North Kivu.
He was then to head to South Sudan, visiting the capital Juba.
South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, has suffered from chronic instability since independence in 2011, including a brutal five-year civil war.
Meanwhile the DRC, which Pope John Paul II visited in August 1985, is struggling to contain dozens of armed groups in the east of the vast nation.
Pope postpones Africa visit over knee problem
https://arab.news/rtsgb
Pope postpones Africa visit over knee problem
- The trip, originally planned for July 2 to 7, will be rescheduled though no new date has been set
- Francis, 85, has been suffering from pain in his right knee in recent weeks
EU to suspend 93 billion euro retaliatory trade package against US for 6 months
- “With the removal of the tariff threat by the US we can now return to the important business,” Gill said
- The Commission will soon make a proposal “to roll over our suspended countermeasures”
BRUSSELS: The European Commission said on Friday it would propose suspending for another six months an EU package of retaliatory trade measures against the US worth 93 billion euros ($109.19 billion) that would otherwise kick in on February 7.
The package, prepared in the first half of last year when the European Union was negotiating a trade deal with the United States, was put on hold for six months when Brussels and Washington agreed on a joint statement on trade in August 2025.
US President Donald Trump’s threat last week to impose new tariffs on eight European countries over Washington’s push to acquire Greenland had made the retaliatory package a handy tool for the EU to use had Trump followed through on his threat.
“With the removal of the tariff threat by the US we can now return to the important business of implementing the joint EU-US statement,” Commission spokesman Olof Gill said.
The Commission will soon make a proposal “to roll over our suspended countermeasures, which are set to expire on February 7,” Gill said, adding the measures would be suspended for a further six months.
“Just to make absolutely clear — the measures would remain suspended, but if we need them at any point in the future, they can be unsuspended,” Gill said.
