Pope Francis might travel to North Korea, in what would be the latest historic meeting brokered by South Korean President Moon Jae-In.
"The pope said ‘[I] will unconditionally give an answer if an [official] invitation arrives and I can go'," Moon spokesman Yoon Young-chan told reporters at the Vatican.
Moon carried an informal invitation to the pope to visit Pyongyang, the latest installment in the South Korean leader’s shuttle diplomacy between the North Korea and the West. Likewise, it was Moon’s team that carried dictator Kim Jong Un’s invitation for a meeting to President Trump and announced in May that the American leader had agreed. If the trip comes to fruition, Francis will be the first Roman pontiff to visit the regime.
"I strongly support the South Korean government's efforts that are pushing for a peace process on the Korean Peninsula," Francis said, according to an account provided to Yonhap News by Moon’s office. "Move forward without stopping. Do not be afraid.”
A visit to North Korea would mark Pope Francis’s second trip to an isolated Communist regime. The pontiff visited Cuba in 2015 for meetings with dictator Fidel Castro which drew charges of appeasement. He presided over a public mass in Havana, giving a homily that seemed to contain oblique references to the regime.
“All of us are called by virtue of our Christian vocation to that service which truly serves, and to help one another not to be tempted by a ‘service’ which is really ‘self-serving,’” he said, per Time's transcript. “Service is never ideological, for we do not serve ideas, we serve people.”